“Its a sad moment, really, when parents first become a bit frightened of their children.”

Ghana is like a lion without a head

At the age of 15, a teacher had asked me what I wanted to do for a career, and without knowing why or even how I replied that I wanted to be a poet.

Things are working out… towards their dazzling conclusions.

Humans, not places, make memories.

Once in a while I catch myself wondering whether I would have found the courage to write if I had not started to write when I was too young to know what was good for me.

Love is fine for singing about and love songs are good to listen to, sometimes even to dance to. But when we need food for our stomachs and clothes for our backs, love is nothing. Ah my lady, the last man any woman should think of marrying is the man she loves.

Once an interesting idea or theme occurs to me then I would want to write a poem about it. The rest, frankly, is not difficult.

The very old certainly do not go back on lunch remains but they do bite back at old conversational topics.

After all, if we look closer into ourselves, shall we not admit that the warmth from other people comes so sweet to us when it comes, because, we always carry with us the knowledge of the cold loneliness of death?

the best way to sharpen a knife is not to whet one side of it only. And neither can you solve a riddle by considering only one end of it.

People are worms, and even the God who created them is immensely bored with their antics.

Toyin Falola has given us what is truly rare in modern African writing: a seriously funny, racy, irreverent package of memories, and full of the most wonderful pieces of poetry and ordinary information.

It is understandable why the African artist is utilitarian.

For us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and authoritarianism.

I always wanted to write poetry, even when I was very young.

They had always told me that I wrote like a man.

The outlines of the needed psychology of becoming can be discovered by looking within ourselves; for it is knowledge of our own uniqueness that supplies the first, and probably the best, hints for acquiring orderly knowledge of others.

Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind’s essential illness.

Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.

What becomes a crime deserving capital punishment when the tables are turned is a matter of small moment when the negro woman is the accusing party.

My final comment is that I still believe this man [John D. Rockefeller] is corrupt and he used unfair ways to become wealthy, all he cared about was his money and wasn’t considered.

I wanted to become the seeker, the aroused and passionate explorer, and it was better to go at it knowing nothing at all, always choosing the unmarked bottle, always choosing your own unproven method, armed with nothing but faith and a belief in astonishment.

When we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves

Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.