"Ende was anxious for an explanation. He looked from his father to the strange object removed from the earth. ‘Dad what’s going on?’ Odula stood up slowly. ‘Let’s go home’. In a raised voice, Ende, blinking rapidly, said, ‘Dad tell me what’s going on? What is in this bag?’"

"The woman, a buxom radiant veteran, cackled, clapping her hands…‘Angel Martha! Na angel you be na. Wetin you wan do? Work for office, abi sell for market?’"

"A role model must be someone in my life, not a singer, actor or celebrity, for I do not know what their values are"

"She had told him, ‘Many men, only God knows where they come from, enter this room with big rods between their legs and chuck them inside me anyhow. After all, they pay money for it. You hear?’ He wanted to tell her that she could do other things instead of taking their money and the pain. But he had no courage"

"The man you become is the result of the totality of your environment rather than the mercy of the men who may or may not even be there to be your role models. You must develop an awareness that will transcend the short comings that you experienced while growing up, such as the absence of significant others like fathers and uncles"

"remained the main hope of the African continent, of Black people throughout the world."

"Because apart from his power over individuals, he was a terror to the social fabric of individual nations. Because society exists on the notion that there is right and wrong and that the demarcation between them is clear and unmistakable. But when the Kangaroo makes it possible for right to become wrong and vice versa, then the nation reaps a harvest of turmoil."

"…I had lived in Phokwane all my life where white people were a rare sight. You could only see them if you went to the edge of the village where a few shops were located…they generally looked overfed including their not so small women and children [with] their red faces which must have been responding to the lick of the African sun"

"To ensure the reproduction of such an economy of pleasure, the posts, palaces, and public places have been filled with buffoons, fools, and clowns at various levels, offering a variety of services—journalists, insiders, clerks, hagiographers, censors, informers, praise singers, courtiers... Their function is to preach before the fetish of power the fiction of perfection. Thanks to them, the postcolony has become a world of narcissistic self-gratification."

"…head the size of a sheep, large ears so it could hear the smallest sound, long, powerful hind legs and rather small forelegs or hands…"

"I was young, volatile and adventurous…I also knew how to put my rags together to look good…I used my good eye for clothing to maximise advantage. I was always raring to go. The city was abuzz with night clubs and disco joints that were jumping at all hours of the night"

"Is it a good life, Daddy?” Nkiru has taken to asking lately on the phone, with that faint, vaguely troubling American accent. It is not good or bad, I tell her, it is simply mine. And that is what matters."

"But she has no reason to agree or disagree, she knows nothing about riots..."

"Some nights the sky wept stars that quickly floated and disappeared into the darkness before our wishes could meet them."

"[D]ue to the conspiracy of the economic system and the power relation between Africans and Whites, my father and my uncles were never allowed the opportunity to earn enough to enable them to assume the responsibility to raise us properly…and become the honourable men and fathers they needed to be… There is no way in hell I could lead a normal life in a shack, which is a distorted, grotesque and unsafe and twisted environment for human habitation, easily contributing to the break down of the family"

"Because Chrisjan liked fishing, Mum knew immediately that he must have stolen our stuff. Mum says that's exactly the way the Coloureds are. You can never ever trust them. After all the years of supplying them with a job and a decent income, they simply turn around and stab you in the back."

"An incurable believer in hard work…she put all her energy into business"

"The girls watched the women melt into the thick forest"

"They would have to use it sparingly so as not to run out beforethe next visit”"

"I wish we had enough ammunition. Who are they to pushus out? It’s their weapon. Their weapon pushed us out, not them"

"The warmth freely radiated by his family was enough toprovide the answer to his question"

"[The rebel federal soldiers’] favourite pastime was to hunt for and abduct young females or older ones in the absence of young ladies or mere girls, in the absence of either. They had no respect for females found within the invaded areas. They would not kill them. They would rather abduct and violate them"

"The presence of the delegation from Mboke, Ihiagwa, hismother’s home, was especially conspicuous. ("

"Bits of Gonma’s mother’s flesh were strewn all over the ground. It was heart breaking and the women virtually rent their hearts."

"The sometimes waylaid the women returning fromthe distant market and disposed them of their goods"

"This story] would cause her to make a clear link between education and dignity."

"The men pounced on them, pulling them up forcefully and pushing them out. They never returned… Later, stories were told of how their heads were shattered with heavy iron rods, their brains spilling on the ground. According to the stories, their bodies were dragged to some location and, before long, vultures began to hover around"

"Men, women and children all eventually become victims of war but women always appear to be double victims"

"So she took Anikwenwa on long walks, telling him that the land from that palm tree to that plantain tree was theirs, that his grandfather had passed it on to his father. She told him the same things over and over, even though he looked bored and bewildered, and she did not let him go and play in moonlight unless she was watching.”"

"Did Nwamgba not know that Obierika was an only child, that his late father had been an only child whose wives had lost pregnancies and buried babies? Perhaps somebody in their family had committed the taboo of selling a girl into slavery and the earth god Ani was visiting misfortune on them.”"

"Before anyone could shout ‘take cover’, they heard ‘gboam, gboam, boom, boom, kpoom!’ One fast plane had dropped a string of lethal bombs as it whistled past the helpless traders who had already dropped their goods and were lying flat on the ground… The harassed women got up slowly…"

"“Her father found her exhausting, this sharp-tongued, head-strong daughter who had once wrestled her brother to the ground. (After which her father had warned everybody not to let the news leave the compound that the girl had thrown a boy.)”"

"Deze’s mother told the girls about an elderly man, Jo-seph, who was beaten to death because he tried to stopthe uniformed intruders from taking his bicycle."

"primitive culture instead of a worthwhile topic like African Alliances in the American-Soviet Tensions”"

"grace in her straight back”"

"sharp-tongued, headstrong,” and he often found her exhausting because she was the type of girl who crossed gender lines and “wrestled her brother to the ground”"

"silently carve[s] designs on her pottery uncertain of how to handle a woman crying about things that did not deserve tears”"

"his name [is] Anikwenwa as far as she [is] concerned”"

"like a person diligently acting a bizarre pantomime”"

"the Igala and Edo traders, [and] the white-skinned men”"

"she, unlike others, had not spent too much time going round and round in her speech”"

"We have big dreams of building libraries and providing books for state schools that don’t have anything in their libraries, and also of organizing lots and lots of workshops, in reading and writing”"

"But because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye, I went through a mental shift in my perception of literature. I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature. I started to write about things I recognized.”"

"“to create a single story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become”"

"regain a kind of paradise” and see people as more than just one incomplete idea"

"The Bulgarians were not impressed. They wanted the contract directly and not by proxy. They sent the Chief back empty-handed. The Chief returned home, abandoned the contract, went into hiding, and that was that. The Nigerians made a show of looking for him. A solitary policeman was dispatched to trace him. He had no means of transportation, he said, and ended up in a bar somewhere in Ikorodu, a few miles from Lagos. And that too was that."

"lost pregnancies and buried babies”"

"What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children.”"

"she had believed that her chi and his chi had destined their marriage” and could not otherwise be deterred from her plans to marry him"

"A love sip, he called it, because you shared the little things you loved with the people you loved The tea was always too hot, always burned my tongue.”"