As a novelist, I ask of myself only that I tell the truth and that I tell it beautifully.

As a writer, one is obliged to release her words, to let them live in the world on their own.

Every Christmas, all around Ghana, there are tons of these parties and they are full of everything that exists in human life in Ghana and worldwide.

So often, literature about African people is conflated with literature about African politics, as if the state were somehow of greater import or interest than the individual.

The summer I finished my first novel Ghana Must Go, I drove across west Africa: from Accra to Lomé to Cotonou to the deliciously named Ouagadougou.

I wouldn't mind my book being called an African novel if it didn't invite lazy readings.

Being a twin, and being my sister's twin, is such a defining part of my life that I wouldn't know how to be who I am, including a writer, without that being somehow at the centre.

I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open my heart.

The writer presents himself to the blank page not with an open passport but an open heart.

I'm not sure where I'm from! I was born in London. My father's from Ghana but lives in Saudi Arabia. My mother's Nigerian but lives in Ghana. I grew up in Boston.

How can I come from a nation? How can a human being come from a concept?

To reveal the beauty of life, let your tears wash away the shadows of darkness.

I feel age like an icicle down my back.

No more the mounting larks, while Daphne sings, Shall, list'ning, in mid-air suspend their wings.

The greatest and most amiable privilege which the rich enjoy over the poor is that which they exercise the least--the privilege of making others happy.

I sing the sweets I know, the charms I feel, my morning incense, and my evening meal, the sweets of hasty pudding.

I'm probably a monster-of-the-week guy, and that comes back down to my old favorite show, which as a kid was always Scooby-Doo.

I could write down twenty cases wherein I wished that God had done otherwise than he did, but which I now see, if I had had my own way, would have led to extensive mischief.

Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

How one stands up to any sort of allegation in the heat of political battle reveals the strength and nature of your character. It's one of the reasons we have campaigns.

The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine.