Peace is a time when people can tell each other their real names.
Every face I see I am looking for them in it.
Truly, there is no flag for us floating people. We are millions but we are not a nation. We cannot stay together.
In a few breaths time I will speak sad words to you. But you must hear them in the same way we have agreed to see the scars now. Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this story-teller is alive.
I watched all of those children smiling and dancing and splashing one another in salt water and bright sunlight, and I laughed and laughed until the sound of the sea was drowned.
I think my ideal [person] would speak many languages. He would speak Ibo and Yoruba and English and French and all of the others. He could speak with any person, even the soldiers, and if there was violence in their hearts, he could change it.
Do not be afraid of me! I am only a human being!
Let us go and collect stories!
I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, 'I survived'.
We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us.
However long the moon disappears, someday it must shine again.
I know that the hopes of this whole human world can fit inside one soul.
It was hard not to be full of hope.