Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
America is decidedly not 'post-racial.'
As Americans, I think we're a very entitled bunch.
Sometimes writing it is a good way to understand something.
No one can really relate to somebody who has given up entirely.
It takes time for people to understand how to hold leaders accountable.
Our racial past and future is something that we Americans must address.
I've had great writing teachers and mentors and great success with my first book.
I suppose I'm pulled towards fiction because I really like the freedom it gives me.
I don't think there is enough understanding of how diverse black America actually is.
It's a beautiful thing, the desire to help a fellow human who is maybe in a rough spot.
U.N.-orchestrated gatherings are typically the death of all spontaneity and innovation.
Like all things, cities must change - even a city as enamoured of the past and memory as D.C.
Anybody who tells you they're not scared when starting a new book project is a very good liar.
Medicine has an immediate impact, the ability to do good. Writing is such a solitary activity.
I think, all too often, this society has too monolithic a definition of what a black American is.
It's true that people will take advantage of you in Nigeria, but this happens everywhere in the world.
'Talking Peace' is one of the few books from childhood that I still keep prominently displayed on my bookshelf.
I think 'Beasts of No Nation' is a novel that hopefully will affect each person who reads it in a different way.
I hear a good song and I start thinking, 'Oh shoot. You know there's a story that can be told to this,' and whatnot.
The first time I ever cast a vote in my 1992 Blessed Sacrament School poll, I voted for Ross Perot because - Ross Perot.
In general, Barack Hussein Obama brings us face to face with the discomfort our society feels with this idea of difference.
'Beasts of No Nation' began when I read an article about child soldiers in Sierra Leone during my final year of high school.
D.C. is in my blood, my diction, my sensibility and style. I am, though, in love with a city that cannot fully love me back.
Kidnapping causes a long-term rupture in the psyche of those kidnapped and of those who wait for their return. It doesn't end.
I would say, number one, don't worry about getting published. Just write. Number two, just write. Three is make sure you read.
I feel like it's not Africans who are afraid of China's rise in Africa. It's the West that's afraid of China's rise in Africa.
My parents have raised me and my three siblings to be aware of the privilege we have been afforded and the responsibility it brings.
For me, I am really interested in how I can stretch myself to produce things. If, in the process, others take note and recognise that, then wonderful.
There are multiple levels of 'we' and multiple groups that can constitute this idea of who we are. We need to be aware of who we are including and excluding.
Many great novels have shown a world torn to shreds by the brutality of war. To do so, their authors ground their texts in the details of destruction and decay.
In terms of medicine, I've generally been pretty interested in public health issues as they relate to sub-Saharan Africa on a broad scale - HIV/AIDS, malaria etc.
Africa wants the world to acknowledge that through fair partnerships with other members of the global community, we ourselves are capable of unprecedented growth.
There are skills you pick up on in a clinical environment in terms of how to ask questions, what to look for, how to listen that serve one well when trying to write.
European authors often write books about the rest of the world that profess a vision of shared humanity but fall far short, casting the other as exotic or dangerous.
Why do Angelina Jolie and Bono receive overwhelming attention for their work in Africa while Nwankwo Kanu or Dikembe Mutombo, Africans both, are hardly ever mentioned?
Memoir is a difficult literary form to pull off when dealing with discrete and poignant moments in a life, even harder when seeking to narrate over 80 years of existence.
I love playing with language and the rhythm of language - for some reason, this seems so much easier for me to do when I get to make things up than when writing nonfiction.
Everybody has an equal right to be on this earth and to be happy on this earth and to achieve on this earth. That's kind of the way that I would like to try and go about living.
Reading 'Search Sweet Country' is like reading a dream, and indeed, at times, it feels like the magical landscapes of writers like the Nigerian Ben Okri or the Mozambican Mia Couto.
There are some people who will tell you oil is the greatest thing that ever happened to Nigeria. And there are other people who will tell you it's the worst thing that ever happened.
I'm a black man in the United States, and there's no two ways about that. I have a shared common experience with other black men, and through that, there's an automatic understanding.
I'll confess that, from an early age, I was a huge fan of President Reagan because my parents bought me an enormous stuffed monkey that they named President Reagan - yes, I get it now.
There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one's cultural superiority.
When you relate to a disease, you're afraid. When you relate to a person, there is compassion. You see someone that is like you, that could be like you. You can see yourself in that same situation.
I've got to keep on writing. That's non-negotiable. At the same time, one has to look at the world and recognise that writing is not the only thing to be done - I want to have an effect on the world.
Sometimes you just wanna go out, see your action movie, be done with it, come home. You know, and, like, you see 'The Matrix' or whatever, you see whatever film it is, and you're like, 'Oh cool,' whatever.
Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film about Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head - because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West's fantasy of itself.
The kidnapped person is so tantalizingly close, kept alive by a devastating hope. Kidnapping or hostage-taking is perhaps the most disturbing form of terror because it turns this hope into a liability that can paralyze.
Lagos is sometimes emblematic of disorder. In traffic, drivers make their own rules. There is a constant war between our street hawkers and our various forms of law enforcement deployed to eradicate the 'indiscipline' of poverty.
I think the more complex your idea of who someone is or who a particular group is, the less able you are to separate 'we' and 'outside' or 'us and them.' I think that that's something that we really, really need to pay attention to.