“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.”

Sometimes a word or an argument will trigger a poem.

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.

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.

It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it.

If you want your hair to be thicker, cut it when the moon is about to be full – a heavy, full, waxing moon. Do not cut it when the moon’s waning.

We must accept life for what it actually is – a challenge to our quality without which we should never know of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature.

The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.

The world is full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.

When you have good friends you’ve been around, every time they talk, you don’t give them your full attention.

At twenty a man is full of fight and hope. He wants to reform the world. When he is seventy he still wants to reform the world, but he knows he can’t.

That is why prayer is so exhausting and so vital. If we believed it, the prayer meeting would be as full as the church.