My grief is that the publishing world, the book writing world is an extraordinary shoddy, dirty, dingy world.

You can't deny what you've learned; you can't deny your travels; you can't deny the nature of your life.

An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.

We cannot understand all the traits we have inherited. Sometimes we can be strangers to ourselves.

Africans need to be kicked, that's the only thing they understand.

I really wasn't equipped to be a writer when I left Oxford. But then I set out to learn. I've always had the highest regard for the craft. I've always felt it was work.

One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas – and you have to work through it all.