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

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

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

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

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.