I Was Stained By Failure.

When It Comes To Dressing Well, American Culture Is So Self-fulfilled That It Has Not Only Disregarded This Courtesy Of Self-presentation, But Has Turned That Disregard Into A Virtue. "we Are Too Superior/busy/cool/not-uptight To Bother About How We Look To Other People, And So We Can Wear Pajamas To School And Underwear To The Mall.

I Think It's Important To Humanize History; Fiction Can Help Us Remember. A Lot Of Books I've Read In The Past Have Been So Much More Important Than Textbooks - There Is An Emotional Connection With One Particular Person. I'm Very Much Of A Research-is-important Type Of Fiction Writer, Even For Contemporary Fiction. I Wrote About Blogs In America And I've Never Blogged. But I Read Many, Many Blogs - Usually About Feminist Things, Or About Race, Or About Hair.

The Best Novels Are Those That Are Important Without Being Like Medicine; They Have Something To Say, Are Expansive And Intelligent But Never Forget To Be Entertaining And To Have Character And Emotion At Their Centre.

If I Had Not Grown Up In Nigeria- And If All I Knew Of Africa Were Of Popular Images- I Too Would Think That Africa Was A Place Of Beautiful Landscapes, Beautiful Animals And Incomprehensible People Fighting Sensless Wars, Dying Of Poverty And Aids- Unable To Speak For Themselves And Waiting To Be Saved By A Kind White Foreigner.

Never Ever Accept 'because You Are A Woman' As A Reason For Doing Or Not Doing Anything.