To really talk about African story, and teach this story, you have to teach that tribes were actually nations. You have to teach that chiefs were actually kings, with kingdoms. You have to teach that there was a structure that worked in Africa prior to colonialism. You have to teach that countries were colonized that were doing fine by themselves. And that's uncomfortable.

Sitting in the back row of a full audience watching one of my movies, and hearing them cry and hearing them laugh in the right moments, particularly when they laugh at a line I've stolen from one of my family members and put in the film. That excites me a great deal.

I was lucky enough to date my first love for five years. We had a very romantic, very dramatic teenage love affair. And it has impacted me because I have married a man who is simply the grownup version of my first love. So, I believe my first love was just preparing me for the man I'm married to today. And it has also impacted the way I write, because there will always be a love story in every movie I write. Always! I think having a positive first love experience before the heartbreak made me a more confident in who I am, a more confident female today.

If you unite a couple on a joint fight, the question is, "Does it unite them literally, or does it weaken their love?" And if it weakens their love, is that true love? And if this is true love, then you know they should be united by their separation. It's their fight that brings them emotionally together while they're physically separated, and so, though there's physical separation, there is mental and emotional closeness.

There are important differences that mean we appreciate each other, not tolerate each other. Race creates this idea that there's this massive difference. So when you use race as a means to explore politics, it's a very interesting way of looking at difference, yet similarities.

Don't take no as a full stop, treat it like a comma.

As people of color, we're left out of history. History is sort of told around us. We're bystanders, we're passive, we're observers. We're never the center of our history.