I divide my time between Columbia, Maryland, and Lagos, Nigeria.

Lasting love has to be built on mutual regard and respect. It is about seeing the other person. I am very interested in relationships and, when I watch couples, sometimes I can sense a blindness has set in. They have stopped seeing each other. It is not easy to see another person.

The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be, rather than recognising how we are.

Then she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing him. Need gave him power without his trying; need was the choicelessness she often felt around him.

Because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye … I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature.

I am a strong believer in the ability of human beings to change for the better. I am a strong believer in trying to change what we are dissatisfied with.

And it's wrong of you to think that love leaves room for nothing else. It's possible to love something and still condescend to it.