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

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.

I'm not trying to be in your face and take a picture that is like a journalistic kind of image. I got interested in a kind of complicated, compiled, visual field.

Unless she scares the hell out of you, blows the cobwebs from your mind, scorches your heart with passion, melts your chains with goodness and lights a fire in your pants...then she is not the one.

Be aware of the voices in your head. Identify them. Just because you hear it doesn’t mean it’s your voice saying it. And just because you think it doesn’t mean it’s true.

Ebola has shown that the world is not ready to deal with an epidemic on this scale.

I don't get to the global issues or anything like that. I am just trying to be silly.

I'm very comfortable discussing my personal life, because it's so boring.

In this business actors who have Botox or surgery make you very aware of age. It's awful.

The mold of our fortunes is in our own hands.

Don't let ignorance blind you. Open your eyes, heart and your mind. And if you're feeling alone, know that the world can be a lonely place, but it would be lonelier without you in it.

The war on drugs has been a social and political failure. We need to encourage sport and stop encouraging drugs.

Laughter is holier than piety, freedom is sweeter than fame, and in the end it's love and love alone that really matters.