“When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we see something which you do not see.”

I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.

If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own. If you don’t like what somebody says, say what it is you don’t like.

As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us.

Charity is the opium of the privileged.

When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.

And theories are no more than fictions which help us to make sense of experience and which are subject to disconfirmation when their explanations are no longer adequate.

It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have – otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.

Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too – If one says no to the other, let his wing break.

No man however great is greater than his people.

The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.

The impatient idealist says: ‘Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.’ But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.

Every generation must find its mission and fulfill it, as Fanon said – or betray it. So it is not something that you can write up on the wall, saying this is what has to be done. Every generation has to discover what it needs to do.

Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.

We shall all live. We pray for life, children, a good harvest and happiness. You will have what is good for you and I will have what is good for me. Let the kite perch and let the egret perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break.

Nigeria is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.

A disease that has never been seen before cannot be cured with every-day herbs.

As expected life isn’t that sweet at all. When I came to Tokyo I thought I could achieve anything with my own two hands. It’s not like that.

Whatever has “wit enough to keep it sweet” defies corruption and outlasts all time; but the wit must be of that outward and visible order which needs no introduction or demonstration at our hands.

Don’t you know how sweet and wonderful life can be?

I want to stop and thank you baby, how sweet it is to be loved by you.

That’s when you know for sure somebody loves you.

I have been a joy to live with all spring: Upbeat, warm and tender, uncomplicated, and loving.

I am no trouble at all. You could press me into dough and make sugar cookies out of me, I’ve been so sweet.

Theres heaven in the sweet by and by but there is to be victory in the nasty now and now.