One day, I was running to the river. Along the way there was the most exquisite butterfly, a tiny little thing, on the pavement. I kind of jumped over it. And then two days later I woke up in the middle of the night with a character running, jumping over butterflies on the streets of Nairobi. After that, I followed the story. The story wrote itself.

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

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

I think every morning we wake up offers a new beginning, a new way of stepping into the day. I think every conversation could be a new chance.

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.

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

Even though we've written epic poems and made incredible films about love, I still don't think anyone can understand what it is, or why it means everything.