“That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing – which is never an easy thing to do.”

In the beginning, before the arrival of the white men, I had considered myself neutral. I had wanted neither side to win, neither the army nor the rebels. As it turned out, both sides lost.

One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas – and you have to work through it all.

The family feuds or the village feuds often had to do with an idea of honor. Perhaps it was a peasant idea; perhaps this idea of honor is especially important to a society without recourse to law or without confidence in law.

The past has to be seen to be dead; or the past will kill.

One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.

I’ve never abandoned the novel.

A civilization which has taken over the world cannot be said to be dying.

We cannot understand all the traits we have inherited. Sometimes we can be strangers to ourselves.

Some writers can only deal with childhood experience, because it’s complete. For another kind of writer, life goes on, and he’s able to keep processing that as well.

I feel that at any stage of my literary career it could have been said that the last book contained all the others.

I could meet dreadful people and end up seeing the world through their eyes, seeing their frailties, their needs.

The world outside existed in a kind of darkness; and we inquired about nothing.

This is unusual for me. I have given readings and not lectures. I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true.

When I learnt to write I became my own master, I became very strong, and that strength is with me to this very day.

I’m my own writer. My material means I’m entirely separate.

If ever you wish to meet intellectual frauds in quantity, go to Paris.

Hold loosely to the things of this life, so that if God requires them of you, it will be easy to let them go.

I think playing against [Lionel Messi] is pretty difficult. Playing by the side of the best of the world is always good. Things get easier. And if I have to win, may it be by Messi’s side. It would be great.

The way is near, but men seek it afar. It is in easy things, but men seek for it in difficult things.

Have a plan. Follow the plan, and you’ll be surprised how successful you can be. Most people don’t have a plan. That’s why it’s easy to beat most folks.

Moving on is easy what your leaving behind is what makes it hard.

I get along with guys; most of my friends are guys. It’s easier to trust men sometimes. I only have a few close girlfriends that I trust.

The first time you quit, it’s hard. The second time, it gets easier. The third time, you don’t even have to think about it.

Two kinds of blindness are easily combined so that those who do not see really appear to see what is not.