36 Quotes by Taiye Selasi

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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