Love is fine for singing about and love songs are good to listen to, sometimes even to dance to. But when we need food for our stomachs and clothes for our backs, love is nothing. Ah my lady, the last man any woman should think of marrying is the man she loves.

Ama Ata Aidoo

Categorized in : Men Love Is Song

Humans, not places, make memories.

Ama Ata Aidoo

making-memories humans memories

There are powerful forces undermining progress in Africa. But one must never underestimate the power of the people to bring about change.

Ama Ata Aidoo

progress powerful people

For us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and authoritarianism. It is understandable why the African artist is utilitarian.

Ama Ata Aidoo

fighting purpose artist

Time by itself means nothing, no matter how fast it moves, unless we give it something to carry for us; something we value. Because it is such a precious vehicle, is time.

Ama Ata Aidoo

time mean moving

People are worms, and even the God who created them is immensely bored with their antics.

Ama Ata Aidoo

worms bored people

No matter what anybody says, we can't have it all. Not if you are a woman. Not yet.

Ama Ata Aidoo

no-matter-what ifs matter

the best way to sharpen a knife is not to whet one side of it only. And neither can you solve a riddle by considering only one end of it.

Ama Ata Aidoo

knives sides way

Toyin Falola has given us what is truly rare in modern African writing: a seriously funny, racy, irreverent package of memories, and full of the most wonderful pieces of poetry and ordinary information. It is a matter of some interest, that the only other volume A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt reminds one of is Ake, by Wole Soyinka. What is it about these Yorubas?

Ama Ata Aidoo

ordinary writing memories

They had always told me that I wrote like a man.

Ama Ata Aidoo

men

money-making is like a god possessing a priest. He never will leave you, until he has occupied you, wholly changed the order of your being, and seared you through and up and down. Then only would he eventually leave you, but nothing of you except an exhausted wreck, lying prone and wondering who are you.

Ama Ata Aidoo

wrecks order lying

Politicians are easy to attack, but frankly, we are all guilty of not meeting the needs of Africa's young people properly.

Ama Ata Aidoo

guilty people needs

Ghana is like a lion without a head

Ama Ata Aidoo

ghana lions

Once in a while I catch myself wondering whether I would have found the courage to write if I had not started to write when I was too young to know what was good for me.

Ama Ata Aidoo

found wonder writing

Once an interesting idea or theme occurs to me then I would want to write a poem about it. The rest, frankly, is not difficult.

Ama Ata Aidoo

writing ideas interesting

Soyinka's Death at Dawn, Auden's Musée des Beaux Arts, Stevie Smith's Not Waving but Drowning and Wislawa Szymborska's Some People come to mind immediately. But there are plenty, plenty more that I enjoy.

Ama Ata Aidoo

mind people art

At the age of 15, a teacher had asked me what I wanted to do for a career, and without knowing why or even how I replied that I wanted to be a poet.

Ama Ata Aidoo

careers knowing teacher

Its a sad moment, really, when parents first become a bit frightened of their children.

Ama Ata Aidoo

parent children firsts

O yes, everyone gets lonely some time or other. After all, if we look closer into ourselves, shall we not admit that the warmth from other people comes so sweet to us when it comes, because, we always carry with us the knowledge of the cold loneliness of death?

Ama Ata Aidoo

lonely loneliness sweet

Things are working out... towards their dazzling conclusions.

Ama Ata Aidoo

dazzling conclusion work-out

Sometimes a word or an argument will trigger a poem.

Ama Ata Aidoo

triggers argument sometimes