Quotes by Teju Cole

Always say 'no pun intended' to draw attention to the intended pun.

Oh, I love labels, as long as they are numerous. I'm an American writer. I'm a Nigerian writer. I'm a Nigerian American writer. I'm an African writer. I'm a Yoruba writer. I'm an African American writer.

It’s an Obama book, certainly. I was delighted, and astonished, to hear recently that he was reading it. It’s a book about a new kind of American reality, one that takes diversity for granted. It doesn’t celebrate diversity, actually, it just says: this is how we live now.

Malcolm X recognized that difference contains its own value, and that the struggle must be to advance that value. Martin Luther King is admired by everyone, he wants everyone to join together, but this idea that you should let them hit you on the other side of your face, this makes no sense to me.

There are almost no Native Americans in New York City, and very few in all of the Northeast. It isn’t right that people are not terrified by this because this is a terrifying thing that happened to a vast population.

From where I stood, the Statue of Liberty was a flourescent green fleck against the sky, and beyond her sat Ellis Island, the focus of so many myths; but it had been built too late for those early Africans – who weren’t immigrants in any case – and it had been closed too soon to mean anything to the later Africans like Kenneth, or the cabdriver, or me.

I often say I’ve spent more time with photography than I have with literature just in terms of hours.

But a book suggests conversation: one person is speaking to another, and audible sound is, or should be, natural to that exchange. So I read aloud with myself as the audience, and gave voice to another’s words.

The music you travel with helps you to create your own internal weather.

The soft ululations of the water fell into my ears, and out of those murmurs, M.’s plaintive voice.