Writing a book is like an unknown abyss, every time. Every book is different. Contrary to what unpublished writers think, it's horrible to have a book out.

Don't write about a character. Become that character, and then write your story.

Nothing is as important as a likable narrator. Nothing holds a story together better.

You can tell within a sentence if something is fiction or non-fiction. You can tell in the artifice of the language or the care of the construction the difference between art and life.

Art is so personal. I'm very comforted by the fact that certain movies that I love, other people hate. Certain books that I love, other people hate. You can't please everybody.

To have too much time is not good, you have to force yourself. And human beings aren't meant for true freedom. I've learned that, having had it.

If you write a page a day in couple months you have a good chunk of the book and then after a year you have almost a book. It's not that...hard.

I think fiction is about small ambition, small failed ambition.

I've written five books, a book every three years. I'm fairly lazy and it doesn't take that much...people who are not lazy are Isaac Asimov.

You're never so alive as after you thought you were going to die.

You have to be smart enough to see the world for yourself and honest. The whole book-publicity thing is not really honest, at base.

The relationship with my people, the Nigerian people, is very good. My relationship with the rulers has always been problematic.

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

Feminism as a political movement has to specifically address the needs of men in their struggle to revolutionize their consciousness.

Your life is going to be determined by your prayer life.

Pressure is an illusion, but I like that illusion of pressure.

When Trump says fake news, he means journalism that makes points with which he disagrees, usually about him.

The moment we let go of our obsessive concern for our own welfare, our mind naturally relaxes and becomes lighter.

Lately I’d begun carrying pain amulets in my bag, like some people have breath mints.

I think the people running climate change denial campaigns are sociopaths.

Your values are your current estimations of truth. They represent your answer to the question of how to live.