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

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.

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.

The truth, and nothing but the truth, is that dawn begins with a wrestling match with my soul and a systematic rejection of all the other useful possibilities a day offers. I make obeisance to the story, its characters, and the muse with burnt offerings.

I come from a culture that has refined the art of the dirge to a sublime level.

I don't think Kenya is the only country that tries to induce amnesia - it seems to be a global phenomenon. But offenses do not die. They do not disappear.