"Apart from a mark on my palm I had managed to avoid being discovered. It may simply have been that I had grown tired of coming and going. It is terrible to forever remain in-between."

"The clearing was the beginning of an expressway. Building companies had levelled the trees. In places the earth was red. We passed a tree that had been felled. Red liquid dripped from its stump as if the tree had been a murdered giant whose blood wouldn’t stop flowing."

"The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time."

"In that land of beginnings spirits mingled with the unborn. We could assume numerous forms. Many of us were birds. We knew no boundaries. There was much feasting, playing, and sorrowing. We feasted much because of the beautiful terrors of eternity. We played much because we were free. And we sorrowed much because there were always those amongst us who had just returned from the world of the Living. They had returned inconsolable for all the love they had left behind, all the suffering they hadn’t redeemed, all that they hadn’t understood, and for all that they had barely begun to learn before they were drawn back to the land of origins."

"The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love, and to be greater than our suffering."

"You are a mischievous one. You will cause no end of trouble. You have to travel many roads before you find the river of your destiny. This life of yours will be full of riddles. You will be protected and you will never be alone."

""How many times had I come and gone through the dreaded gateway? How many times had I been born and died young? And how often to the same parents? I had no idea. So much of the dust of living was in me. But this time, somewhere in the interspace between the spirit world and the Living, I chose to stay."

"On the day of death, there is no medicine."

"He who waits will see what is in the grass."

"You pay twenty head of cattle for a maiden because you are excited. Then when your head is cool, you begin to say "If I had known!"

"Night might convert the old devil into a fiend."

"Learn to drink, my son. A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life."

"can you hear me now? I shall not rest, for I shall know no peace until I have avenged you."

"A maiden is one of those things a man must not trust. By Allah, it is!"

"I wish I could tell you my story…I feel you would understand”…. to a stranger he met fortuitously on the train and for two days had travelled with in silence"

"But now things are different. Yes, things are gradually passing into African hands. Soon al the power will be in our hands. It's worth fighting for."

"....I was born sixty-five years ago, at a time when man was man, and women were won by those who deserved them."

"Inverse of the word live is evil."

"To see the madness and yet walk a perfect silver line. ... That's what the true story-teller should be: a great guide, a clear mind, who can walk a silver line in hell or madness."

"If we could be pure dancers in spirit we would never be afraid to love, and we would love with strength and wisdom."

"Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories."

"How the city attracts all types and how the unwary must suffer from ignorance of its ways."

"What if by sheer repetition we become the person we most often pretend to be? Does that mean there is no authentic self? Are we made of habits, compressed by time, like layered rocks?"

"Maybe true travel is not the transportation of the body, but a change of perception, renewing the mind."

"His motto had become money, money, money. This was the way people of the city realized themselves."

"We want a new life, new opportunities ... We want to live there for some time -- but only for some time ! We have our homeland here and must come back when we can answer your father's challenge ! When we have done something, become something!"

"He looked out of the window, as if the interview gave him some pain, and for a moment I studied him silently."

"He looked over his shoulder, like a thief entering a strong room, and his voice sank low."

"....Tonight, one of you is going to win the hand of my daughter Zarah. But he must be the bravest of you all. We live in times when a man’s might is his right."

"Be like the tortoise- grow a hard shell to protect your strong heart. Be like the eagle- soar above your pain and carry the banner and the wonder of our lives to the farthest corners of the world. Build your strength. Destiny is difficult."

"Not a war. But then, it was a war. When the forest burns do the locusts stop to say goodbye?"

"I say there has been a war. If a fish comes out of the water and says the crocodile has one eye, who has been there with him?"

"Our society is a battlefield. Poverty, corruption and hunger are the bullets. Bad governments are the bombs."

"Responsibility is active. Vigilant. Actions become character and character becomes destiny. . .the moment you see something is wrong, you have a responsibility."

"Quiet people are the most dangerous."

"For your reflections reflect on the things you do. And the things you do reflect on you."

"Craft is important. The greater the idea, the greater the craft you need."

"What hope is there for individual reality or authenticity when the forces of violence and orthodoxy, the earthly powers of guns and bombs and manipulated public opinion make it impossible for us to be authentic and fulfilled human beings? The only hope is in the creation of alternative values, alternative realities. The only hope is in daring to redream one's place in the world - a beautiful act of imagination, and a sustained act of self becoming. Which is to say that in some way or another we breach and confound the accepted frontiers of things."

"Bad things will happen and good things too. Your life will be full of surprises. Miracles happen only where there has been suffering. So taste your grief to the fullest. Don’t try and press it down. Don’t hide from it. Don’t escape. It is life too. It is truth. But it will pass and time will put a strange honey in the bitterness. That’s the way life goes."

"I kept looking forward the answer to things. I kept looking, and I never saw, and I became lost. I lost myself, lost my own reality."

"A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation... Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger."

"Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger."

"Don't neglect the gold in your own back yard."

"In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry."

"So long as a canvas is empty its potential is infinite… The empty canvas can become a gateway into the landscape of nightmares or a vision of sensual bliss."

"I love your loneliness. It is brave. It makes the universe want to protect you."

"One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits. The whole of human history is an undiscovered continent deep in our souls. There are dolphins, plants that dream, magic birds inside us. The sky is inside us. The earth is in us."

"This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down."

"A dream can be the highest point of a life"

"The road will never swallow you. The river of destiny will always overcome evil. May you understand your fate. Suffering will never destroy you, but will make you stronger. Success will never confuse you of scatter your spirit, but will make you fly higher into the good sunlight. Your life will always surprise you."