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.

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

I can edit into infinity. It's such a joy. I'd probably edit until the last word. Until there's only one word left.

I like talking to myself and making patterns out of the letters of the alphabet on blank surfaces.

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 young readers I have interacted with carry old concerns repackaged in the skin of a new generation: puzzlement over continuous national moral failings, contradictions with the elders, nostalgia for a nonexistent Kenyan past.