I am the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.

Africa has no future.

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.

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.

Great writing can be done in biography, history, art.

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

Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.