Writers

"She’s popular for writing such books as The House in the Forest, Dark Blue is for Dreams, and Something to Hide."

"Surviving Biafra: A Nigerwife’s Story, is based on the first-hand account of Rosina Umelo, which takes the story to the end and beyond. It seemed to be a natural progression."

"Rosina Umelo's Who Are You? wonderfully evokes a wide range of characters and their community in this story about an abandoned child."

"A good writer has a sense of integrity that is hard to compromise."

"Editors are a bit like stage-hands: the play can’t go on without them, and yet their role is necessarily in the shadows. It is, however, interesting to see how many writers acknowledge their editors – the third eye is of value."

"For me, literature is an incredibly important way of telling the truth."

"I think if you’re a white Zimbabwean, you have an extra responsibility to give back if you can. My hope as a publisher for more than 30 years is that I have enabled a corpus of work proffering many different stories and points of view."

"Books open up new worlds for us emotionally, geographically, culturally; by encouraging understanding, they help us to develop more compassionate, rational, tolerant societies, giving rise to a more broad-minded world."

"Happiness is important, but I wouldn't say it is the main purpose of human existence."

"Not all of us have that luxury, of a past. My history doesn't offer me much in that respect."

"Our story is over, the ink has dried, each of us must move on now and it will be as if we had never met, never loved, and never dreamt together."

"There is no loneliness like the loneliness of a stranger in a strange city."

"Nostalgia settled on my shoulders like the arm of a long-lost friend, urging me to look back and listen; it had been years since I heard such morning sounds, such silence."

"I've seen children snatched away from their mothers, never to be reunited. I've seen husbands taken from their wives and kids and sent away to prison. I've seen grown men flogged by soldiers in front of their kids. That's how history is made, and it's our job to witness it."

"The further from home you wander, the closer you get to Siberia."

"I didn't love him. He was a good, decent guy, but I wanted more at that time." She shrugged. "I was not so young anymore. Time was passing for me. I wanted more… excitement."

"You must take a year off, one of these days, before you’re old and tired and weighed down by responsibility. Go away somewhere, and read. Read all the important books. Educate yourself, then you’ll see the world in a different way."

"Can you continue to love a person regardless of such shortcomings? Maybe because you hope to save them? Or because you can't help it? Isn't that what love is all about?"

"We came to tell you sir, that our clinic is run-down and abandoned.We came to tell you that we don’t have a single borehole onMorgan street... we are here to protest against this neglect--- weare dying from diseases. We are dying from a lack of hope. Andthat is why we are here today to protest. And this is the way wefeel we ought to express our displeasure"

"Sometimes poets have to be imperfect so their poetry can be perfect."

"Hagar takes to prostitution whenrejection and hunger look her straight in the face"

"Look, we are living under siege. Their very presence on our streetsand in the government house instead of the barrack where theybelong is an act of aggression. They hold us cowed with guns sothat they will steal our money—they will continue subjugating uskilling all dissenters one by one, sending them to exile till there isno competitor left to oppose them."

"We don finally reach the end of the road. We don dey together since I was born, but now time don come wey me and you must part. Bye-bye.Goodnight. Ka chi foo. Oda ro. Sai gobe"

"Our job is to find out the truth, even if it is buried deep in the earth."

"The students, who should have been busy taking theirbaths and getting set for lectures, sat idly...discussing the boycottof lectures"

"More than once ourtaxi was forced to hug the kerb as siren blaring military jeepspassed at top speed...”"

"A mob wielding cudgels and cutlasses is hot on the heels of a youthwho desperately crosses to the other side of the road, narrowlymissing the fender of a truck. The mob follows growing bigger asit goes. The youth, looking over his shoulder as he runs, crashesinto a light pole and falls senseless to the ground. Before he canregain a second wind the mob is on him. I watch the cudgels riseand fall; I hear his wailing ululating screams finally turn into awhimper. They poured petrol on him and set him ablaze"

"There had been an accident. Bola’s family-father, mother, and twosisters had been in a car crash. It was late in the evening...theywere on their way to Ibadan for a visit...The father driving hadfailed to see the truck laying on its side in the middle of the road.It was a military truck carrying the furniture of an officer ontransfer from Lagos to Ibadan. The father and mother, who were in front, had died instantly; Peju, the elder sister, died on the way to the hospital; the other sister, Lola, sustained minor injuries"

"Look out there, see the long queue of cars waiting for fuel. Someof them have been there for three days...And we are a majorproducer of oil"

"The houses were old and craggy and lichened. The place had theunfinished, abandoned appearance of an under waterscape.Crouching under the bigger or in their own clusters were hastilybuilt wood and zinc structures that housed an incredibly largenumber of families: the fathers were mostly out-of-work drivers,laborers, fugitives convalescing between prison terms"

"We should never take democracy for granted. Neither should we worship it. It must be nurtured and strengthened on a daily basis. It is our way of living, our state of mind. A democratic society is sustainable because it aims at the highest development of every one of its members."

"Therefore, our common goal as leaders is to provide for an environment where the democratic institutions can thrive – provide for rule of law, human rights, democratic governance, and free and fair elections. And we must enforce accountability, accountability, and again, accountability. The people will do the rest in a democracy. For only in a democracy is everyone provided with opportunities for self-development and realization."

"We arrived from being the most isolated and closed communist regime in the world to one of the most open. Today we have a dynamic market economy, a vibrant, creative society."

"The values connection is very important. We have to strengthen that connection. If America invests in that, America will have many friends who live on their own, not with bombs or American troops."

"We have a long-term goal to build the foundation for continued, practical cooperation by continuously holding official and unofficial meetings based on the principle of respecting the rights and proposals of the participants."

"We never hide our shadow, we give more power to our people, to our media. If our three million people participate, I think we are going to be a big, powerful country."

"We all know there are sound critiques of the UN. If our United Nations is to survive in the new reality, we must embrace substantive change. We need reforms to build a just common home. If we delay action, change will become more painful and challenging."

"We have two big neighbors, and, of course, we are really striving to maintain neighborly good relations with our two neighbors. As well, we want to have good relations with other nations. All those other nations we call our third neighbor. This is the concept after 1990."

"The only way to bring peace and stability is through a system of [norms], laws and institutions that every country agrees to abide by. If the UN fails to adopt [such a system], we all fail. When we face global challenges, we must admit one thing: no one country – big or small – can address them on its own. Therefore, the coordinated actions of all players and countries are needed."

"No dictatorship can stay (in power) for good... People's aspirations for a free life will be the everlasting strength."

"Mongolia is a country that is capable of fixing past mistakes. It is an open country, and we need investments if we want to avoid capital shortages, currency depreciation and inflation. Improving the legal environment in order to attract investments again and regain the confidence of investors is therefore one of the priorities for my administration."

"I made a very historic decision. Every month, we will give cash to our athletes for their lifetime if they get medals in the Olympic games."

"Of course, when you are in office, you have certain responsibilities. But when you are out of office, you also have more freedom to express your ideas."

"I've been working on the immune response to viruses for decades, am an author on hundreds of research papers and, in my professional life, can't recall that I've ever use the term 'natural immunity'. It's just immunity."

"They rely on what they call 'natural immunity', a term that's new to me."

"Once we're vaccinated, we have memory B cells and T cells that are readily kicked back into action by either a vaccine booster shot, or by catching COVID-19. This is active protection, we're simply jump starting the natural immunity we've relied on through evolution."

"There was a house made of dawn. It was made of pollen and of rain, and the land was very old and everlasting."

"I wouldn't be writing now if Momaday hadn't done that book. I would have died. (JB: What did it do for you?) ALLEN: It told me that I was sane-or if I was crazy at least fifty thousand people out there were just as nutty in exactly the same way I was, so it was okay. I was not all alone. It did that and it brought my land back to me."

"Myth is at the beginning and ending of all story, of all literature. (1990)"

"Favorite writers? Herman Melville. Norman McClain, Emily Dickinson, and Wallace Stevens. (1982)"