“When we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.”

As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us.

Charity is the opium of the privileged.

When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.

And theories are no more than fictions which help us to make sense of experience and which are subject to disconfirmation when their explanations are no longer adequate.

It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have – otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.

Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too – If one says no to the other, let his wing break.

No man however great is greater than his people.

The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.

The impatient idealist says: ‘Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.’ But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.

Every generation must find its mission and fulfill it, as Fanon said – or betray it. So it is not something that you can write up on the wall, saying this is what has to be done. Every generation has to discover what it needs to do.

Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.

We shall all live. We pray for life, children, a good harvest and happiness. You will have what is good for you and I will have what is good for me. Let the kite perch and let the egret perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break.

Nigeria is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.

A disease that has never been seen before cannot be cured with every-day herbs.

The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.

People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that’s the time to do something about it, not when it’s around your neck.

Cold in the earth and the deeps now piled above thee, Far, far, removed, cold in the dreary grave! Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee, Severed at last byTime’s all-serving wave?

Look on the grave where thou must sleep Thy last, and strongest foe; It is endurance not to weep, If that repose seem woe.

One must accept the fact that we have only one companion in this world, a companion who accompanies us from the cradle to the grave – our own self. Get on good terms with that companion – learn to live with yourself.

Indeed, the hereditary gift of prophecy will go to the grave with me.

Pretty girls make graves.

Love’s very pain is sweet, But its reward is in the world divine Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.

Years are only garments, and you either wear them with style all your life, or else you go dowdy to the grave.

This body is a tent which for a space Does the pure soul with kingly presence grace; When he departs, comes the tent-pitcher, Death, Strikes it, and moves to a new halting-place.