Taiye Selasi Quotes

• As a writer, one is obliged to release her words, to let them live in the world on their own.

  Taiye Selasi

  World, Release, Obliged

  "Afropolitan Author Talks Fractured Family Ties in ‘Ghana Must Go’". Interview with Patrice Peck, www.ebony.com. May 2, 2013.

  48 Copy quote

• As a novelist, I ask of myself only that I tell the truth and that I tell it beautifully.

  Taiye Selasi

  Novelists, Telling The Truth, Asks

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• The big ideas always come in flashes. I don't really craft stories that much. I genuinely don't know where these people come from and I've often wondered if writing is just a socially acceptable form of madness.

  Taiye Selasi

  Writing, Ideas, People

  "Taiye Selasi: 'I'm very willing to follow my imagination'". Interview with Tim Lewis, www.theguardian.com. March 22, 2013.

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• So often, literature about African people is conflated with literature about African politics, as if the state were somehow of greater import or interest than the individual.

  Taiye Selasi

  People, Literature, Individual

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• How can I come from a nation? How can a human being come from a concept?

  Taiye Selasi

  Humans, Nations, Human Beings

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• What distinguishes [Afropolitans] is a willingness to complicate Africa – namely, to engage with, critique, and celebrate the parts of Africa that mean most to them. Perhaps what most typifies the Afropolitan consciousness is the refusal to oversimplify; the effort to understand what is ailing in Africa alongside the desire to honour what is wonderful, unique. Rather than essentialising the geographical entity, we seek to comprehend the cultural complexity; to honour the intellectual and spiritual legacy; and to sustain our parents’ cultures.

  Taiye Selasi

  Spiritual, Mean, Unique

  9 Copy quote

• I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open my heart.

  Taiye Selasi

  Writing, Heart, Mind

  "Afropolitan Author Talks Fractured Family Ties in ‘Ghana Must Go’". Interview with Patrice Peck, www.ebony.com. May 2, 2013.

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• I read recently that the problem with stereotypes isn't that they are inaccurate, but that they're incomplete. And this captures perfectly what I think about contemporary African literature. The problem isn't that it's inaccurate, it's that it's incomplete.

  Taiye Selasi

  Thinking, Literature, Problem

  "African Writer Helps Put Her Community On Media Map". "Tell Me More" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. June 20, 2011.

  5 Copy quote

• I wouldn't mind my book being called an African novel if it didn't invite lazy readings.

  Taiye Selasi

  Book, Reading, Lazy

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• When I'm working, I'm so narrowly focused on sound, language, rhythm, flow, that I rarely feel the emotion of the text. It's only after - long after - I've finished a piece that I can experience in any way its emotional charge.

  Taiye Selasi

  Emotional, Long, Flow

  "Afropolitan Author Talks Fractured Family Ties in ‘Ghana Must Go’". Interview with Patrice Peck, www.ebony.com. May 2, 2013.

  7 Copy quote

• Sight is subjective. We learned that in class.

  Taiye Selasi

  Sight, Class, Subjective

  Taiye Selasi (2013). “Ghana Must Go: A Novel”, p.67, Penguin

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• I'm not sure where I'm from! I was born in London. My father's from Ghana but lives in Saudi Arabia. My mother's Nigerian but lives in Ghana. I grew up in Boston.

  Taiye Selasi

  Mother, Father, Ghana

  "Taiye Selasi on discovering her pride in her African roots". www.theguardian.com. March 22, 2013.

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• The summer I finished my first novel Ghana Must Go, I drove across west Africa: from Accra to Lomé to Cotonou to the deliciously named Ouagadougou.

  Taiye Selasi

  Summer, Ghana, West

  "Taiye Selasi on discovering her pride in her African roots" by Taiye Selasi, www.theguardian.com. March 22, 2013.

  8 Copy quote

• The writer presents himself to the blank page not with an open passport but an open heart.

  Taiye Selasi

  Heart, Pages, Blank

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• I was four when I announced my ambition to write, eight when I began publishing such claims.

  Taiye Selasi

  Writing, Ambition, Eight

  4 Copy quote

• I live in Rome and five minutes from my flat is a church where you can walk in and see this beautiful Caravaggio. Just the way this man uses dark paint: dark to create dark to create dark, the layering of the darkness in his work. I just race home: I want to create!

  Taiye Selasi

  Beautiful, Home, Dark

  "Taiye Selasi: 'I'm very willing to follow my imagination'". Interview with Tim Lewis, www.theguardian.com. March 22, 2013.

  7 Copy quote

• When writing screenplays, it's a matter of remembering to leave off the page anything and everything that doesn't appear on the screen.

  Taiye Selasi

  Writing, Anything And Everything, Pages

  4 Copy quote

• Being a twin, and being my sister's twin, is such a defining part of my life that I wouldn't know how to be who I am, including a writer, without that being somehow at the centre.

  Taiye Selasi

  Who I Am, Defining, Twins

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• Every Christmas, all around Ghana, there are tons of these parties and they are full of everything that exists in human life in Ghana and worldwide.

  Taiye Selasi

  Party, Ghana, Human Life

  "African Writer Helps Put Her Community On Media Map". "Tell Me More" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. June 20, 2011.

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• I consider myself West African, among other cultural identities, and a writer, among other creative ones.

  Taiye Selasi

  Creative, Identity, West

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• As a young woman, I had been seeking experience, knowledge, truth, the stuff writers need in their work, but when the artist actually kicked in, I came to understand that in this romantic relationship I was not free to be myself, or to find myself, in order to begin the true work I needed to do.

  Taiye Selasi

  Artist, Order, Needs

  4 Copy quote

• I wrote fiction during my entire childhood, from age 4 to 18, and started writing plays when I went to Yale and Oxford.

  Taiye Selasi

  Writing, Yale, Play

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• I've written fiction for as long as I can remember; it's always been my preferred form of play.

  Taiye Selasi

  Play, Long, Fiction

  "Afropolitan Author Talks Fractured Family Ties in ‘Ghana Must Go’". Interview with Patrice Peck, www.ebony.com. May 2, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• The thing that comes most frequently to me on yoga retreats is excruciating pain in my hips.

  Taiye Selasi

  Pain, Yoga, Retreat

  "Taiye Selasi: 'I'm very willing to follow my imagination'". Interview with Tim Lewis, www.theguardian.com. March 22, 2013.

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