I was born in 1966, at the beginning of the Biafran-Nigerian Civil War, and the war ended after three years. And I was growing up in school, and the federal government didn't want us taught about the history of the war, because they thought it probably would make us generate a new generation of rebels.

When I was growing up in Nigeria - and I shouldn't say Nigeria, because that's too general, but in Afikpo, the Igbo part of the country where I'm from - there were always rites of passage for young men. Men were taught to be men in the ways in which we are not women; that's essentially what it is.

I truly believe that writing is a continuum - so the different genres and forms are simply stops along the same continuum. Different ideas that need to be expressed sometimes require different forms for the ideas to float better. I don't write essays as often as I should.

The privilege of being a writer is that you have this opportunity to slow down and to consider things.

It is very hard to transform your culture and your workforce to be a relevant company in the digital world if all of your processes are stuck in the traditional world.

You have to constantly change and evolve because people get bored. Look at The Undertaker: he's evolved so many times.

Persistence and determination are incredibly important. But sometimes you need to analyze the situation and understand when you're wrong. You need to be able to cop to being wrong, learn to change, and continue to grow as a human being.

What was earth, we made into filth. We must at least be able to transform it back to earth.