AMA ATA AIDOO

People are worms, and even the God who created them is immensely bored with their antics.

Because I am an African, I am a Ghanaian.

They had always told me that I wrote like a man.

Politicians are easy to attack, but frankly, we are all guilty of not meeting the needs of Africa's young people properly.

It's a sad moment, really, when parents first become a bit frightened of their children.

At the age of 15, a teacher had asked me what I wanted to do for a career, and without knowing why or even how I replied that I wanted to be a poet.

Africa is not fulfilling people's hopes and aspirations. African leaders have not had an agenda that included governing Africa so that people would find their careers, their life, dreams and visions fulfilled here.

For us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and authoritarianism. It is understandable why the African artist is utilitarian.

Humans, not places, make memories.

Toyin Falola has given us what is truly rare in modern African writing: a seriously funny, racy, irreverent package of memories, and full of the most wonderful pieces of poetry and ordinary information. It is a matter of some interest, that the only other volume A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt reminds one of is Ake, by Wole Soyinka. What is it about these Yorubas?

Once an interesting idea or theme occurs to me then I would want to write a poem about it. The rest, frankly, is not difficult.

No matter what anybody says, we can't have it all. Not if you are a woman. Not yet.

The very old certainly do not go back on lunch remains but they do bite back at old conversational topics.

Soyinka's Death at Dawn, Auden's Musée des Beaux Arts, Stevie Smith's Not Waving but Drowning and Wislawa Szymborska's Some People come to mind immediately. But there are plenty, plenty more that I enjoy.

There are powerful forces undermining progress in Africa. But one must never underestimate the power of the people to bring about change.

Sometimes a word or an argument will trigger a poem.

I've written poems about gifts. Life is inspirational; sometimes it comes from the most unlikely places.

O yes, everyone gets lonely some time or other. After all, if we look closer into ourselves, shall we not admit that the warmth from other people comes so sweet to us when it comes, because, we always carry with us the knowledge of the cold loneliness of death?

the best way to sharpen a knife is not to whet one side of it only. And neither can you solve a riddle by considering only one end of it.

Once in a while I catch myself wondering whether I would have found the courage to write if I had not started to write when I was too young to know what was good for me.

I always wanted to write poetry, even when I was very young.

Things are working out... towards their dazzling conclusions.

money-making is like a god possessing a priest. He never will leave you, until he has occupied you, wholly changed the order of your being, and seared you through and up and down. Then only would he eventually leave you, but nothing of you except an exhausted wreck, lying prone and wondering who are you.

Time by itself means nothing, no matter how fast it moves, unless we give it something to carry for us; something we value. Because it is such a precious vehicle, is time.

Love is fine for singing about and love songs are good to listen to, sometimes even to dance to. But when we need food for our stomachs and clothes for our backs, love is nothing. Ah my lady, the last man any woman should think of marrying is the man she loves.