“The short answer to that is 'no.' The long answer is 'fuck no.”

“We're like questions and answers. What good is a fucking question without an answer?”

“The fuck is your life. Answer it.”

“There was no short answer to this; like so much else, it was a long story. But what really makes any story real is knowing someone will hear it. And understand.”

“So, is there hope for a truly democratic Africa? Long answer: Only if continent-wide improvements in education, human rights and public health are coupled with an aggressive and far-sighted debt-relief program that breaks the cycle of subsistence farming and urban squalor. Short answer: No.”

“The older you get, the more questions you get asked, and the more weary you become of answering the questions and the more elusive the answers--any answer, every answer--seem. --Maureen O'Toople in the short story "Your Question for Author Here”