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

Matters of the subconscious affect reality in ways we don't quite realize.

Every Kenyan writer has offered me something to hold onto, something to believe in.

Kenya is an immense land with a capacity for healing.

Dying away from home, away from the soil of your birth - and to do so unseen and unmourned - is a profound horror.

Even if we want to eradicate our ghosts, our dead, our murdered, even if you erase a name and the record of the existence of a person, somebody remembers.

Even if you're in charge of the grand story there's still memory. The other stories do not go away.