She hopes for nothing except fine weather and a resolution. She wants to end properly, like a good sentence.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Time is how you spend your love.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

Sometimes evil didn't need an excuse. Sometimes evil just was.

I want to swim in both directions at once. Desire success, court failure.

Nothing matches a Sailor’s kiss coming back home where he belongs.

At Earth's great market where Joy is trafficked in, Buy while thy purse yet swells with golden Youth.

There are worse places to be than on your own.

You cannot govern the creative impulse; all you can do is eliminate obstacles and smooth the way for it.

I am not African because I was born in Africa but because Africa was born in me.

My lovely wife Janet has been in a few paintings. She is basically a reserved woman who has never sought the limelight. She has always been there throughout my career and continues to be at my side.

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.

Someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings.