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

If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing.

I grew up in a small place and left it when I was quite young and entered the bigger world.

I came to London. It had become the center of my world and I had worked hard to come to it. And I was lost.

I became very interested in the Islamic question, and thought I would try to understand it from the roots, ask very simple questions and somehow make a narrative of that discovery.

It is important not to trust people too much.

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