We never think that our mothers will die. It was like suddenly an abyss opened at my feet - I was standing on nothing. It was the strangest thing. Her passing away ripped the solidity out of the world.

The worst time was 1983. Love and life and everything went wrong. I reached absolute rock bottom. I saw the Minotaur at the bottom of the abyss. I learnt of the harshness of the world and its impartiality to human failure.

The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.

The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.

I became a sceptic of one way of seeing the world. And I think it is what started me in my awareness that any worldview is superstitious.

The greatest religions convert the world through stories.