The writer is all alone.

You need someone to see what you've done, to read it and to understand it and to appreciate what's gone into it.

Africa has no future.

That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.

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.

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

Whenever I have had to write fiction, I've always had to invent a character who roughly has my background.