“No matter what anybody says, we can’t have it all. Not if you are a woman. Not yet.”

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.

Life is inspirational; sometimes it comes from the most unlikely places.

I love being on stage, I love being able to tell a story, I love the fact that the audience listens and laughs at it. It makes me happy, and it’s what I live for.

I dislike religion quite intensely. It’s been the cause of all the grief in the world ever since they discovered the first stone to worship.

All my dreams came true. There’s not many people that can say that. I mean, most people have to work in a job they hate all their lives, and I can’t imagine that.

Cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue.

By all accounts I should be dead! The abuse I put my body through: the drugs, the alcohol, the lifestyle I’ve lived the last 30 years!

God has supplied all my needs and has not failed me once.

I learned that if I had known how much of this Nazi memorabilia there was to collect, I never would have started in the first place. It’s crowding me out of my house.

Biologically the species is the accumulation of the experiments of all its successful individuals since the beginning.