The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

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

I had no student friends to talk to about literature. My tutor was a really nice man, very charming - but he had no literary judgment.

I always knew who I was and where I had come from. I was not looking for a home in other people's lands.

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

As a child I knew almost nothing, nothing beyond what I had picked up in my grandmother's house. All children, I suppose, come into the world like that, not knowing who they are.

Small things start us in new ways of thinking