All my characters have got a big slice of me in them. A big piece of me, because it’s my dialogue and this is the way I think and talk.
Herbert, my father, was born in Britain but went out to Africa in his teens to join his father and built up an 18,000-acre ranch in what was then Northern Rhodesia, providing work for the locals. He was my hero when I was a boy.
My first novel was rejected by some of the most eminent publishers in the world. Starting again was a real wrench.
The really disturbing thing about Somalia is that in a country where there are few economic opportunities, pirates are perceived as glamorous and are held in awe by young boys who aspire to their lifestyle.
There’s nothing so aphrodisiacal for a woman as money and success.
A man follows the path laid out for him. He does his duty to God and his King. He does what he must do, not what pleases him. God’s truth, boy, what kind of world would this be if every man did what pleased him alone? Who would plough the fields and reap the harvest, if every man had the right to say, ‘I don’t want to do that.’ In this world there is a place for every man, but every man must know his place.
Yet such is the perversity of human nature that I hungered for what I could never have and dreamed of the impossible.
Rage makes a man sick, my son. It spoils his appetite for life and keeps him from sleep at night. We cannot change our world, so we must look for the good things in life and enjoy those to the full.
Should five slaves dictate to a king? If five baboons bark, must the black-maned lion tremble?
Robin Hood was also a terrorist – but he had some style and a little class.
When a traveller gets a thorn in his foot,’ Mbejane went on softly, ‘and he is wise he plucks it out – and he is a fool who leaves it and says “I will keep this thorn to prick me so that I will always remember the road upon which I have travelled.” Nkosi, it is better to remember with pleasure than with pain.
If I have to die, then it’s best to do so before I see everything I love, the land, the animals, the people, all of it destroyed.
The man who drinks Zambezi waters must always return to drink again.
But those set to guard a treasure, are too often those who loot it.
Something always dies when the lion feeds – and yet there is meat for those that follow him.
Duplicity thy name is woman!
Play the game without mercy, play to win.
As they slithered up the muddy bank, scores of tiny silver fish that had been feasting on the open wounds were slow to relinquish their hold and were drawn out with the carcasses. Stranded upon the mud-banks, they flopped and quivered like stars that had fallen to earth.
We are all mere insects caught in the web that the gods spin for us.
The branch breaks that will not bend with the wind. You must learn to bend”.
Goodbye, my mistress”, I whispered. “Farewell, my heart”.