“I’m more trying to connect; I’m more listening to people. Whatever I get is very meaningful to me.”

If a novel is written in a certain language with certain characters from a particular community and the story is very good or illuminating, then that work is translated into the language of another community.

Writing in African languages became a topic of discussion in conferences, in schools, in classrooms; the issue is always being raised – so it’s no longer “in the closet,” as it were. It’s part of the discussion going on about the future of African literature.

There is no way we can survive as a nation in the world without finding unity.

They want to be the ones telling people: “This is what we have done in history” but when people begin to say, “No this is what we have done in history” it’s a different thing.

It was a revelation for me, in a practical sense, that you could write in an African language and still reach an audience beyond that language through the art of translation.

People went to war as a result of it and even today, every Sunday.

What’s good about writing is that when you write novels or fiction, people can see that the problems in one region are similar to problems in another region.

In terms of language, English is very dominant vis-Ã-vis African language. That in itself is a power relationship – between languages and communities – because the English language is a determinant of the ladder to achievement.

I’m writing for those people in Kenya, but in Irvine and in New York.

How did we arrive at this, that the best leader is the one that knows how to beg for a share of what he has already given away at the price of a broken tool? Where is the future of Africa?

We think of politics in terms of power and who has the power. Politics is the end to which that power is put.

And even in terms of justice, law codes, the legal system. A person who does not know English in Africa is excluded from that system because he can only operate through acts of translation.

Christianity and Western civilization-what countless crimes have been committed in thy name!

We can appreciate each other’s languages. And the question of being uncomfortable about our languages would go away.

Why did Africa let Europe cart away millions of Africa’s souls from the continent to the four corners of the wind?

Our lives are a battlefield on which is fought a continuous war between the forces that are pledged to confirm our humanity and those determined to dismantle it.

The more anger towards the past you carry in your heart, the less capable you are of loving in the present.

Love makes every space sacred and every moment meaningful . . .

Everybody can justify their actions. We all think that we’re doing things for reasons that are meaningful to us. Maybe not to other people, but to us.

Today neither of our two parties maintains a meaningful commitment to the principle of States’ Rights. The 10th Amendment is not a ‘general assumption’ but a rule of law. States rights mean that states have a right to act or not to act, as they see fit, in areas reserved to them.

At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent.

The most meaningful engine of change, powerful enough to confront corporate power, may be not so much environmental quality, as the economic development and growth associated with the effort to improve it.

Church can be extremely boring. It can be very meaningful, it can be character forming, but can be have very little fizz in it.

What you put into it is what you’re going to get out of it. If you’re getting the chance to step into the octagon, you better be going full speed and give it everything you’ve got.