I think every morning we wake up offers a new beginning, a new way of stepping into the day. I think every conversation could be a new chance.

Even though we've written epic poems and made incredible films about love, I still don't think anyone can understand what it is, or why it means everything.

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

For Kenya: we have a chance to start again each time we meet one another. The ghosts do not need to define the future.

Every Kenyan writer has offered me something to hold onto, something to believe in.

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.

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

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.

Burma evoked the lost Kenyan soldiers who served in the war. You never hear about them. There were a significant number of casualties, men who never came back home. But they're never commemorated.

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

It may not seem that way, but I am an absolute optimist, an unrepentant optimist.

Passion is the fire that gets us moving and keeps us motivated regardless of what roadblocks impede the way.

I could feel the real interaction between directing and acting, when an actor or an actress really suggests very interesting things.

Art is fast, but with art you're tied down. That's too negative. What I mean is, you have a business and a place that you go every day. I guess some artists do move around.

To win, you have to risk loss.

If it is something that is right for human beings, then I don't care if other people criticize. You cannot please everyone in the world.

That will be my focus: building a culture that moves away from militarism.

Far more quickly than reason and logic, irony can penetrate rage and puncture self-pity.

I enjoyed being in movies when I was a boy. As a child you're not acting - you believe. Ah, if an adult could only act as a child does with that insane, playing-at-toy- soldiers concentration!

I suppose the things that you always take for granted, that you don't even notice, are what you miss the most.

You do not become a star, you are born a star. A star is born with that indefinable extra something.