I couldn't remember what life was like before I started walking.

I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.

Writing as writing. Writing as rioting. Writing as righting. On the best days, all three.

The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.

The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.

To be alive, it seemed to me, as I stood there in all kinds of sorrow, was to be both original and reflection, and to be dead was to be split off, to be reflection alone.

Things don't go away just because you choose to forget them.

The energies of Lagos life- creative, malevolent, ambiguous- converge at the bus stops

I just realized that we're facing here is an empathy gap. And this was just another way to generate conversation about something that nobody wanted to look at.

Love perhaps includes the promise that when the mob comes for you I'll go against the mob.

The site was a palimpsest, as was all the city, written, erased, rewritten.

The Creator creates all creation.

The road to the promised land runs past Sinai.

Shooting a movie can be so tedious. You're trying to get 20 different angles on the same swing. You never get into a rhythm. But I took it very seriously.

Like the burlesque comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement.

Raising children is like making biscuits: it is as easy to raise a big batch as one, while you have your hands in the dough.

The 'Always Keep the Faith' tattoo I have on the front represents my desire to protect my beliefs.

Film, as any immigrant will tell you, television and movies is the way we make sense of America when we first got here.

I think celebrity culture and sexuality in pop music is really important, but I want there to be an alternative for people.

You don't win as a party unless you become a bigger party.

A story is like building a chapel; a novel is a cathedral.