I admire Toni Morrison, Wole Soyinka, Margaret Atwood, James Baldwin, Elizabeth Strout, D. O. Fagunwa, Sefi Atta, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Colm Toibin and Junot Diaz. It's a long list that keeps growing.

I wanted to explore expectations we have of people - what a woman should be, what a man should be. And if they don't meet our own interpretation of who they should be because of their gender, their background, their ethnic group, we then come to conclusions about them that are not accurate.

I'd always been interested in Nigeria's past.

Never lend people money you can't afford to give them as a gift.

I have a kind of objective luxury about my career.

I wish I hadn't lost it, and for the rest of my life I can never again lose my temper on TV. The BBC could have sacked me and that would have been the end of my career on TV.

I've been through a heartbreak and seen the business side of the music industry. Now I see things clearer.

Meanwhile, hard-working Americans are increasingly faced with workplace conditions in which critically important safeguards are watered down, emerging problems are ignored, and enforcement is scaled back.