I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.

It was a good place for getting lost in, a city no one ever knew, a city explored from the neutral heart outward, until after many years, it defined itself into a jumble of clearings separated by stretches of the unknown, through which the narrowest of paths had been cut.

All the things that were read to me by my father were stories about things becoming all right.

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

There are two ways of talking. One is the easy way, where you talk lightly, and the other one is the considered way. The considered way is what I have put my name to.

The biography of a writer - or even the autobiography - will always have this incompleteness.

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