Politics is politics; art is art. If you play a political role, you have to stop being an artist.

I grew up with reggae music.

Malaria kills and its main victims are children and women. We can stop this scourge so people can live with dignity and go to work and school.

Africa is the future.

In the West, you have always associated the Islamic faith 100 percent with Arab culture. This in itself is a fundamentalist attitude and it is mistaken.

Travel teaches as much as books.

I love meeting interesting people and doing things with them.

I have to protect my family and have a life with them that is completely private.

I want to use my music to deliver a political message and sometimes to denounce, but I don't want to be a politician.

Islam has been badly used by a certain ideology.

I don't want to see that two-tier Senegal, that two-tier Africa, when you have those at the top and those at the bottom, people who are hungry, people who do not have enough to eat.

We have many goals, but only one ultimate purpose of life. That purpose is to be happy.

There's plenty of room for humor in politics, God knows, but it's a serious business.

In the end, the difference between Conservatism and Liberalism seems to be this: the Conservative thinks of liberty as something to be preserved, the Liberal thinks of it as something to be enlarged.

I have a real aversion to ghosts because I don't believe in them. I think ghosts are actually a religious concept, because it means you believe in an afterlife. And I don't.

Some affixes are wildly promiscuous.

If you cannot bless yourself, then nobody can bless you.

I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.

Domestic inflation reflects domestic monetary policy.

The fact that I am able to live a life and act and to do all of those things and support myself and my family is a gift.

Fascinations breeds preparedness, and preparedness, survival.