It is the human potentials that interest me. I travel and everywhere I go I am amazed at the presence of Nigerians. The intelligence, integrity, productivity, initiative.

Religion is all based on the mentality of "I'm right", but now today it's moved from even the question of "I'm right and I'm willing to tolerate those who agree that I am right or those who don't disturb me anyway". Now, it's a question of "If you do not accept that I'm right, I have a right to kill you". That is the mentality of religious fundamentalism today. That is the meaning of the kind of terror which we are witnessing today, that everybody is expendable who do not actually physically line up behind me.

Intolerance has become, I think, the reigning ideology of the world today, the intolerance versus intolerance and it's taken on lethal proportions.

I believe that each writer must decide in which language he or she is most comfortable.

You cannot live a normal existence if you haven't taken care of a problem that affects your life and affects the lives of others, values that you hold which in fact define your very existence.

There are different kinds of artists and very often, I'll be very frank with you, I wish I were a different kind.

Alfred Nobel regretted that his invention, dynamite, was converted to degrading use, hence his creation of the Nobel Prize, as the humanist counter to the destructive power of his genius.