“We do not seek to hurt any man, but if any man seeks to hurt us may he break his neck.”

When a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.

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.

I designed my whole image. That was all me. I just bought some regular clothes, threw a medallion around my neck, and that was it. The next thing I know, that’s the look.

Always watch your back – when I was fourteen I got a tattoo of an eye on the back of my neck, so I could say I was always watchin’ my back.

I’ve got a great staff and great support system, and I’m going to stick my neck out and do what I always do.

With your hand around my neck – heaven and hell dance to the same noise.

I like tattoos. I’m gonna be covered. I’m not going to touch my face or under the chin on the neck: it’s my least favorite place.

The patriarchy continues to try to crush my neck with heavy boots, cut off my life force, and take away my voice – even those who call themselves artists, you know who you are.

After the vines that were tightly wrapped around my neck finally loosened, I made a vow to never take breathing for granted again.

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.