“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.”

Humans, not places, make memories.

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.

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.

One of the indictments of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person.

An idea isn’t worth much until a man is found who has the energy and ability to make it work.

Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn’t stop to enjoy it.

Examining this water…I found floating therein divers earthy particles, and some green streaks, spirally wound serpent-wise.

May we see the Lord in all things-way, truth, and life are all found in knowing Him. May we really meet the Son of God and let Him live in us. Amen.

How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else.

Anything injured, or any unusual creature somebody found, they would always come to our doorstep.

It was the late Dr. Mahendra Lal Sircar who, by founding the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, made it possible for the scientific aspirations of my early years to continue burning brightly.