Be yourself. Ultimately just be yourself.
The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.
You cannot live a normal existence if you haven’t taken care of a problem that affects your life and affects the lives of others, values that you hold which in fact define your very existence.
I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you’re actually sitting down putting words to the paper.
I am convinced that Nigeria would have been a more highly developed country without the oil. I wished we’d never smelled the fumes of petroleum.
Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.
And gradually they’re beginning to recognize the fact that there’s nothing more secure than a democratic, accountable, and participatory form of government. But it’s sunk in only theoretically, it has not yet sunk in completely in practical terms.
Romance is the sweetening of the soul With fragrance offered by the stricken heart.
We live in a materialist world, and materialism appeals so strongly to humanity, no matter where.
My father used to tell me stories before I fell asleep. When the children would gather, at a certain point, I had a tendency to make up my own elementary variations on stories I had heard, or to invent totally new ones.
Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there’s a lot of work to be done.
I think that feeling that if one believed absolutely in any cause, then one must have the confidence, the self-certainty, to go through with that particular course of action.
I’m not one of those writers I learned about who get up in the morning, put a piece of paper in their typewriter machine and start writing. That I’ve never understood.
Very conscious of the fact that an effort was being made to destroy my mind, because I was deprived of books, deprived of any means of writing, deprived of human companionship. You never know how much you need it until you’re deprived of it.
But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That’s all.
Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.
No man beholds his mother’s womb Yet who denies it’s there? Coiled To the navel of the world is that Endless cord that links us all To the great Origin. If I lose my way. The trailing cord will bring me to the roots.
Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness.
I never hesitated, as a student, in embracing the necessity of violence. In South Africa, I didn’t just accept it; I looked forward to it as a mission.
Each time I think Ive created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.