“To me, a recently read novel was like a miniature planet: only a few hours earlier I had been breathing its air and living contentedly among its people - and now I was expected to pronounce a judgement about its worth?”

“I'm one of those people who other people like but never remember. I think most of the world is probably like me. Until recently nothing about me was outstanding, and then my mother got cancer. It's a disease people like to talk about, so I'm more popular now. And when I flip through magazines, I read the breast cancer articles first, even before the numerology column.”

“I have recently been called antisocial, and I'd like to set the record straight. I am not antisocial, I like social. It's people I don't like!”

“The first time I flew, it was being alive. Nothing was pressing under me. I was living in the fullness of air; air all around me, no holding place to break the air spaces. It's worth everything to be alone in the air, alive.”

“I don't expect you to be like them. Don't want you to be. It's not them I want, it's you. From the moment we met, it's only been you.”

“I recently spoke at a university where a student told me it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had recently read a novel called American Psycho,and that it was a shame that young Americans were serial murderers.”