The novelist can't successfully depict such horrifying reality. But she can, and must, try, to bear witness. There are many ways of doing this; the mode I prefer is indirect.

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.

Roots never get the appreciation that a flower does, but that doesn’t make them envious.

We're all dead...Some of us are just a little further along than others.

The only principles of public conduct that are worthy of a gentleman or a man are to sacrifice estate, ease, health, and applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of his country.

If I had time and a hammer, I'd track down every bootleg copy and smash it.

Be strong, live happy and love, but first of all Him whom to love is to obey, and keep His great command!

The thing you have to be prepared for is that other people don't always dream your dream.

You should work your hardest to inspire your inspirations

In terms of the Patriot Act, and all the other things he has pledged he would do, such as transparency in government,[Barack] Obama has reneged on his promises.

People keep referring to me as a standup, and that just doesn't sit well with me because a lot of my friends are standups and they're brilliant at writing jokes, and I'm not.

Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.