I do need to find inner tranquillity and get into a "zone" before I switch on the computer to work on a story. Only after this do I enter the story world, where I meet the characters and, together, we work through the day and night.

I get turned on by the idea of an essence - finding the essence of the thing.

Kenya is an immense land with a capacity for healing.

Novel-writing is a settling, lovely space. I call it self-indulgent - I feel mildly guilty about it.

For Kenya: we have a chance to start again each time we meet one another. The ghosts do not need to define the future.

It may not seem that way, but I am an absolute optimist, an unrepentant optimist.

Recording stories is a way of honoring the faculty of memory, even if it's recorded, outsourcing memory to technology.