Every Christmas, all around Ghana, there are tons of these parties and they are full of everything that exists in human life in Ghana and worldwide.

As a writer, one is obliged to release her words, to let them live in the world on their own.

As a novelist, I ask of myself only that I tell the truth and that I tell it beautifully.

So often, literature about African people is conflated with literature about African politics, as if the state were somehow of greater import or interest than the individual.

The summer I finished my first novel Ghana Must Go, I drove across west Africa: from Accra to Lomé to Cotonou to the deliciously named Ouagadougou.

I wouldn't mind my book being called an African novel if it didn't invite lazy readings.

Being a twin, and being my sister's twin, is such a defining part of my life that I wouldn't know how to be who I am, including a writer, without that being somehow at the centre.

I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open my heart.

The writer presents himself to the blank page not with an open passport but an open heart.

I'm not sure where I'm from! I was born in London. My father's from Ghana but lives in Saudi Arabia. My mother's Nigerian but lives in Ghana. I grew up in Boston.

How can I come from a nation? How can a human being come from a concept?

Brimming. That's what it is, I want to get to a place where my sentences enact brimming.

If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.

I scrupulously hide every legitimate reason for people to hate me, and it turns out they don’t need legitimate reasons. Heaven has fashioned a knife of irony to stab me with.

You'll understand when you've forgotten what you understood before

They're now turning those seeds into intellectual property, so they have a virtual lock on the seeds upon which we all depend for our food and survival.

Let's say the docs present a simplified view of reality.

You write the facts as you see them, and there isn't a lull with a lot of description. No wonder people like to write about murder mysteries and dead bodies!

In Zen brush-painting, the circle is a master's problem. It represents everything and nothing, and in so doing, the universe.

You cannot make peace with terrorists. The normal dividing lines between war and peace do not apply.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.