“People reach an age… where somebody elses platform is no longer yours.”

I love playing with words and texture.

I, like all artists in Western cultures, am a shaman…come in the guise of a comic…to heal perception by using…’jokes’.

I’m extremely optimistic about rapid transformation and change of things in Africa in general.

I, Binyavanga Wainaina, quite honestly swear I have known I am a homosexual since I was five.

Africa is to be pitied, worshipped or dominated

I believe in, and will to the best of my ability fight for, equal rights and freedom of opinion for everyone, regardless of colour, religion, nationality, orientation – you know the rest.

A stretch of my body would surely stretch as far as the sky. The whole universe poised, and I am the agent of any movement.

All people have dignity. Theres nobody who was born without a soul and a spirit.

I like the idea of readers feeling a familiarity, whether its with Africa or childhood.

Everywhere I go, I see young people: Confident, forward looking. I have seen them in Lagos, in Rwanda, in the suburbs of London.

Cross-border trade is part of a single production process, and while apparently the Trump administration will seek to re-examine elements of that production platform, it is what it is and won’t be easily dismantled.

We make things together. We have shared production platforms.

You can be a champion and you can be flashy with money and cars but you have a big platform. What are you trying to change?

It is wrong to even compare such actions to what is done in Guantanamo or elsewhere by the Americans. They do not stand on a high moral platform to preach to others.

I believe that the internet as an open platform for distribution could be a great chance for the diversity of film production.

It’s not easy, though, singing upside down in a headstand on a raised platform with your unfettered breasts hitting you in the chin.

All my songs are where I am.

Fox News never calls up Bobby Seale to articulate a stance in opposition to right-wing conservatives. To me, giving the New Black Panthers a platform on Fox is a subtle tactic to scare people.