“At school, I was the classroom clown - I was always being thrown out for being naughty. Before I left, a teacher called me in and suggested I became an actor.”

“My black hero is and always will be Martin Luther King, not just because of the strength of his oratory but because his vision was very much the reality that I'd come to take for granted.”

“I remember coming back to the U.K. after spending five months in Charlotte for 'Homeland,' and I just found myself just wandering around London. There's nothing like it - the buildings, the archite...”

“I try to ensure my daughters are not spoilt. They are very aware of how lucky they are and appreciate it. We have had some lean years, so they know it's not all about luxury, travel, and hotels. Th...”

“As an ambassador for the aid agency Cafod and the Anthony Nolan Trust, I need to be sure that my public support for those charities is a help for their work, not a hindrance.”

“Back in 2005, the Anthony Nolan Trust could have asked me just to speak out about the lack of ethnic minority donors on the bone marrow register, but that would have meant nothing if I wasn't prepa...”

“No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.”

“When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women”

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”

“We tilt our heads back and open wide. The snow drifts into our zombie mouths crawling with grease and curses and tobacco flakes and cavities and boyfriend/girlfriend juice, the stain of lies. For o...”

“The teachers complain that the students today are all lazy, ignorant, and stupid. But the truth is that you're smarter than they are. You're not even old enough to drive and you already know that n...”

“I told her about school and how I sat on a wall there and felt stories and words move through me ...”

“The weight of the world is a trifle, if we all put our two fingers under it and try to lift together.”

“If we stick together as an American people we can bring down the war criminals that are running our country right now.”

“I have probably purchased fifty 'hot tips' in my career, maybe even more. When I put them all together, I know I am a net loser.”