"So much of life was the peeling away of illusions."

“I'm not saying we are not to be held accountable. What I'm saying is that we need to appreciate past, if you don't appreciate past, you cannot understand why we are like this, why the churches and mosques are controlling our society, why Africans feel inferior. Why are our girls bleaching or make long hair? They all want to be white, Why are they not proud? Why are we not proud of name, of our clothes?”

Source : "INTERVIEW: I cried when I saw Fela! On Broadway - Femi Kuti". Interview with Sam Umukoro, www.premiumtimesng.com. June 17, 2013.

“It is time to put up a love-swing! Tie the body and then tie the mind so that they swing between the arms of the Secret One you love, Bring the water that falls from the clouds to your eyes, and cover yourself inside entirely with the shadow of night. Bring your face up close to his ear, and then talk only about what you want deeply to happen.”

“Light is good company, when alone; I took my comfort where I found it, and the warmest yellow bulb in the living-room lamp had become a kind of radiant babysitter all its own.”

Source : Aimee Bender (2011). “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake”, p.122, Random House

“Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins.”

“The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when they make their tormentors suffer. In seeking the Bird's death to free himself, Louie had chained himself, once again, to his tyrant. During the war, the Bird had been unwilling to let go of Louie; after the war, Louie was unable to let go of the Bird.”

“I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland;Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,By pulling off flesh from the living planet;As if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.”

“From where we lived, to practise in St Louis was an hour-and-a-half drive each way, so that took a lot of the time. So really, our lives just took different paths.”

“According to a Public Policy Polling survey, most Americans find lice and colonoscopies more appealing than Capitol Hill.”