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

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.

Time by itself means nothing, no matter how fast it moves, unless we give it something to carry for us; something we value. Because it is such a precious vehicle, is time.

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

Soyinka’s Death at Dawn, Auden’s Musée des Beaux Arts, Stevie Smith’s Not Waving but Drowning and Wislawa Szymborska’s Some People come to mind immediately. But there are plenty, plenty more that I enjoy.

Actions must have consequences.

We must overcome the notion that we must be regular… it robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre.

It is clear that we must find an African solution to our problems, and that this can only be found in African unity.

One must feel sorry for those who have strange tastes, but never insult them. Their wrong is Nature’s too; they are no more responsible for having come into the world with tendencies unlike ours than are we for being born bandy-legged or well-proportioned.

You began your journey here as a pup. Now you must find your way back. A new quest, a new start.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

We must have Christian ethics for our children, good and strong, but we must make them attractive, too, and it can be done.

We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art…what we are talking about and the only way to know is to have lived and loved and cursed and floundered and enjoyed and suffered.