"the contemporary novel . . . I've read one or two: Rushdie, I've enjoyed, again, exceptionally, Marquez, I love his works: that's another exception. Bessie Head: I found her novels very, very gripping, fascinating, challenging, really intellectually intriguing. Then that black American woman writer, Toni Morrison, the author of Sula, Song of Solomon: she's a fascinating writer. Umberto Eco . . . But generally I don't read novels."

"Sidi feels empowered by seeing her beauty for the first time in the magazine prints. She recognizes that her beauty is a commodity, allowing her agency to make a future for herself. This is a novel idea: choosing one's own future is reserved for men."

"It is five full months since last / I took a wife"

"The greedy dog! Insatiate camel of a foolish, doting race."

"How often must I tell you, Sidi, that / A grown-up girl must cover up her... / Her... shoulders? I can see quite... quite / A good portion of—that!"

"(Lakunle, 2)"

"What I boast is known in Lagos, that city / Of magic, in Badagry where Saro women bathe / In gold, even in smaller towns less than / Twelve miles from here..."

"(Lakunle, 5)"

"Bush-girl you are, bush girl you'll always be; / Uncivilized and primitive—bush-girl!"

"(Lakunle, 9)"

"My Ruth, my Rachel, Esther, Bathsheba / Thou sum of fabled perfections / From Genesis to Revelations"

"(Lakunle, 20)"

"I said: "A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces". In other words: a tiger does not stand in the forest and say: "I am a tiger". When you pass where the tiger has walked before, you see the skeleton of the duiker, you know that some tigritude has been emanated there."

"Sadiku, I am young and brimming; he is spent. / I am the twinkle of a jewel / But he is the hind-quarters of a lion!"

"(Sidi, 23)"

"No! I do not envy him! / Just one woman for me!"

"(Lakunle, 26)"

"To husband his wives surely ought to be / A man's first duties—at all times."

"(Sidi, 47)"

"I do not hate progress, only its nature / Which makes all roofs and faces look the same."

"(Baroka, 52)"

"Moreover, I will admit, / It solves the problem of her bride-price too. / A man must live or fall by his true / Principles. That, I had sworn, / Never to pay."

"(Lakunle, 61)"

"Lakunle, last seen, having freed himself of Sadiku, clearing a space for the young girl."

"You know this business has to be stopped, Simon. And you are the only man who can do it."

"When they get this way there is nothing you can do. It's simply hammering against a brick wall."

"This market is my roost. When I come among the women I am a chicken with a hundred mothers."

"A tiger doesn't proclaim his tigritude, he pounces"

"I have always held the view that when you have that situation, you must refuse to be part of it"

"For me, justice is the first condition of humanity."

"Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't going away"

"Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to those who seek to suppress truth."

"What is one flesh from another? So I tried it again, just to be sure of myself. It was the first step to power, you understand. Power in its purest sense. The end of inhibitions. The conquest of weakness of your too human flesh with all its sentiment."

"Power comes from bending Nature to your will."

"It’s my life that’s gone into his. I haven’t burrowed so deep to cast good earth onto worthless seeds…."

"God rot your coward bones! Do you think not enough people die here that you must come and threaten me with death. You spurious spew. You instrument of mortgage. You unlicensed appendage of the steering wheel..."

"...There are dangers in the Quest I know, but the Word may be found companion not to life, but Death."

"Do you take me for a common gawper after misery?... My bed is among the dead, and when the road rises a victory cry to break my sleep I hurry to a disgruntled swam of souls full of spite for their rejected bodies"