Quotes from Sefi Atta

I couldn't decide on a title for my first novel and my editor came up with Everything Good Will Come. After that, I thought I should name my own books.A Bit of Difference seems just right.

I don't have much of an imagination, but I have a mind bank of details, which I play with. It's how I daydream, so writing like that is natural for me.

I can't say L'Etranger influenced me to write, but for the first time I considered the possibility of telling a story that resembled my own experiences in my own voice.

She says the lesson to learn is that the world is round, which means that if I run too fast I might end up chasing the very homeland I am running from.

She drinks her Eva water. Their parents were taken down by cancer, heart attacks and strokes. Respectable diseases.

Most of the children were shoeless and you were confronted with the dilemma that, no matter how much money you had and no matter where you could escape to overseas, you could not save yourself from your own country. p. 134, Madness i the Family

It occurred to me that there was nothing more precious than satisfaction. That it was possible to end up committing a crime just because you were contaminated by a little discontent. You could convince yourself that you were satisfied, then someone could come along and say, 'But I can offer you more', and then you could begin to think, My life is not worth much after all. In fact, you could tell yourself, My life was completely worthless from the start. p. 247, Yahoo Yahoo

Cooking was a skill, I thought; an art form. In our country, we appreciated the end result, but not the craft, perhaps because we didn't have fancy names. Paring was "cut it." Julienne was "cut it well." Chopping was "cut it well well," and so on till you had puree, which would probably be "mash it." And, if anyone was measuring any ingredient in a kitchen, it meant that they really didn't know what they were doing.

People don't fear the wind until it fells a tree. Then, they say it's too much.

At some point, practicality requires that you reach out to people in the business. You have to take care of business if you value your work.

My accountancy experience could come in handy if ever I find myself in the right position. For now, I'm very happy to write.