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

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.

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?

I learn by doing....the same thing over and over and over again countless times.

...and when he dies, cut him out in little stars, and the face of heaven will be so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no heed to the garish sun.

I'm not crazy, but it's a crazy life. I was raised in a crazy family and it took 31 years to get the crazy out of me.

Ideas reflect the moment, and so you have to use them. If you store ideas, they wither.

Thrillers are my favorite. I like stuff that keeps you on the edge of your seat or maybe makes you jump.

We can't see ahead of time what actions are going to be the ones that move history in dramatic ways.

... the first step of the terrible journey toward feeling somebody should act, that ends in utter confusion and hopelessness, east of the sun and west of the moon.

Children are to be won to follow liberal studies by exhortations and rational motives, and on no account to be forced thereto by whipping.

I enjoy racing so much. Ever since I was 8 or 9, I trained every stroke, because it was the only way I could race a lot.

I'm just trying to do my best every day, hoping that I have done my best every day, and its very easy in a way, but also it's not that easy. Every day counts.