They led and he followed blindly, his heavy chest heaving up and down in silent weeping ... it was the worst kind of madness, deep and tongue-tied. - Chinua Achebe

It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.

I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different colour, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.

When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk