Quotes from Uzodinma Iweala

I'm not a propaganda machine. I tell things how I see them. When I say, for example, that corruption is not the only thing the West should think about when they think about Nigeria, I'm not saying it doesn't exist but that people have the complete wrong focus. There's music, there's art, there's culture.

We are not living in the same world we were immediately after the Cold War, when there seemed to be a greater belief in the universality of human rights and there was enough prosperity to make us question why we had not committed more resources to upholding the values we claimed to hold most dear.

I don't think that one should beat himself or herself over the head if immediately you're not like Jesus Christ or, you know, Gandhi or whoever. But I think the idea is to... to look at those examples and try to... try to operate in a way that every day you live or every interaction you have pushes you further along to operating with that mindset.

There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one's cultural superiority.

Nigeria shed the last of a succession of brutal military dictatorships in 1997 and adopted a democratic form of government only in 1999. Our elections of 2003, 2007, and 2011 were complicated and fraught with tension, but each one has shown remarkable progress.

I would say, number one, don't worry about getting published. Just write. Number two, just write. Three is make sure you read.

There are books that are made for you to sit and puzzle over and spend time with.

Sometimes writing it is a good way to understand something.

When the HIV/AIDS epidemic first appeared, a lot of the reaction was that it's not happening here. It doesn't exist. It's not on the continent of Africa. Then we moved into this other phase, in which it was kind of like, it's everywhere.

I think 'Beasts of No Nation' is a novel that hopefully will affect each person who reads it in a different way.

Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film about Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head - because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West's fantasy of itself.

People just think Africa is this one thing. So if you're from Nigeria, then you're the same as somebody from Kenya; not realizing that within Nigeria, right, we have 250 different ethnic groups, right? Two hundred and fifty different languages.

I've got to keep on writing. That's non-negotiable. At the same time, one has to look at the world and recognise that writing is not the only thing to be done - I want to have an effect on the world.

We grew up going to church, and I believe in God. I don't know that I have the ability to define what or who or how God is. You know, I think that religion kind of messes people up in that regard. That's just my own personal philosophy.

People don't talk about the amount of destruction in terms of human lives that happen, whether it's through slavery, or through, for example, what Belgium was doing in the Congo - the fragmentation of society that happened after that destruction of human life.

There are some people who will tell you oil is the greatest thing that ever happened to Nigeria. And there are other people who will tell you it's the worst thing that ever happened.

Many great novels have shown a world torn to shreds by the brutality of war. To do so, their authors ground their texts in the details of destruction and decay.

In general, Barack Hussein Obama brings us face to face with the discomfort our society feels with this idea of difference.

My parents have raised me and my three siblings to be aware of the privilege we have been afforded and the responsibility it brings.

The denial with which many African leaders and communities greeted the appearance of HIV and AIDS across the continent in the 1990s is now considered a tragic mistake rather than a purposeful pushback against lingering colonial prejudice.

When I speak about 'we,' it gets very complex very quickly. Having grown up in the United States, but also being very much a member of Nigerian societies and also different parts of Nigerian societies, I understand that we construct particular 'we's.'

In my senior year of high school, I read an article in 'Newsweek' about child soldiers in Sierra Leone. I felt a sense of shock - this was happening in the region where I'm from, and people don't know about it. I wanted to understand.

'Beasts of No Nation' began when I read an article about child soldiers in Sierra Leone during my final year of high school.

Medicine has an immediate impact, the ability to do good. Writing is such a solitary activity.