I consider myself West African, among other cultural identities, and a writer, among other creative ones.

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.

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.

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.

I'm an observer. I read about life. I research life. I find a corner in a room and melt into it. I can become invisible. It's an art, and I am a wonderful practitioner.

This isn't a place for lies or pretending everything's all right. We know everything is not all right. If it were, you wouldn't be here. Now. Where did you go?

The first springs of great events like those of great rivers are often mean and little.

Good to forgive Best to forget.

Everywhere I go now, people are like, 'That's the guy from 'Dancing With the Stars!'' It's pretty good that you're not just a football player but you're in the entertainment world.

Lloyd did what he achieved with that shot.

Those rituals of getting ready to write produce a kind of trance state.

I think everybody needed to know what had happened to Emmett Till.

It is rarely that the pleasures of the imagination will compensate for the pain of sleeplessness.

Great buildings, like great mountains, are the work of centuries.