Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.

Africa has no future.

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

It's very attractive to people to be a victim. Instead of having to think out the whole situation, about history and your group and what you are doing... if you begin from the point of view of being a victim, you've got it half-made. I mean intellectually.

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

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 feel that at any stage of my literary career it could have been said that the last book contained all the others.