Quotes from Helon Habila

You must take a year off, one of these days, before you're old and tired and weighed down by responsibility. Go away somewhere, and read. Read all the important books. Educate yourself, then you'll see the world in a different way.

So your question, are we happy here? I say how can we be happy when we are mere wanderers without a home?

Surprisingly, I felt no anger towards him. He was just Man. Man in his basic, rudimentary state, easily moved by powerful emotions like love, lust, anger, greed, and fear, but totally dumb to the finer, acquired emotions like pity, mercy, humour, and justice.

And I too am not myself, hoping for refuge in a metaphor that will contain it all.

Nostalgia settled on my shoulders like the arm of a long-lost friend, urging me to look back and listen; it had been years since I heard such morning sounds, such silence.

Not all of us have that luxury, of a past. My history doesn't offer me much in that respect.

There is no loneliness like the loneliness of a stranger in a strange city.

This was soul calling to soul. A tired, trapped lock at last meeting the key that unlocks it.

Family is worth clinging to wherever one can find it.

I wanted to say, with as much sarcasm as I could put into my voice, "Sir, your poem is both original and interesting, but the part that is interesting is not original, and the part that is original is not interesting." But all I said was, "Not bad, you need to work on it some more.

The further from home you wander, the closer you get to Siberia.

Our job is to find out the truth, even if it is buried deep in the earth.

I didn't love him. He was a good, decent guy, but I wanted more at that time." She shrugged. "I was not so young anymore. Time was passing for me. I wanted more… excitement.

Sometimes poets have to be imperfect so their poetry can be perfect.

Life is seen as an ongoing war between art and philistinism - and although the philistines may win some of the battles, it is literature that always wins the war.

Our story is over, the ink has dried, each of us must move on now and it will be as if we had never met, never loved, and never dreamt together.

Can you continue to love a person regardless of such shortcomings? Maybe because you hope to save them? Or because you can't help it? Isn't that what love is all about?