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

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

Kenya is a mercurial character. I feel the country has a presence that can turn on its people in a very violent way.

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.

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

Kenya is an immense land with a capacity for healing.