Clay can be dirt in the wrong hands, but clay can be art in the right hands.

The beauty standards had nothing to do with me in Mexico. It was such a bizarre, dire time for my hair. I was living in a small town where there was not any semblance of an African community. I'd have to take the bus to Mexico City to find a woman who could braid my hair. That was two and a half hours away.

I grew up in the limelight and being the child of someone famous. So my relationship with fame is not bedazzled.

It's only when you risk failure that you discover things. When you play it safe, you're not expressing the utmost of your human experience.

I thrive on structure. I find my freedom in structure.

I discovered that joy is not the negation of pain, but rather acknowledging the presence of pain and feeling happiness in spite of it.

My father was a professor of political science and also a young politician fighting for democracy in Kenya, and when things got ugly, he went into political exile in Mexico. Then I moved back to Kenya shortly after I turned one, and I grew up in Kenya.

I don't need to be so full of myself that I feel I am without flaw. I can feel beautiful and imperfect at the same time. I have a healthy relationship with my aesthetic insecurities.

It's so funny, you go to acting school thinking you're going to learn how to be other people, but really it taught me how to be myself. Because it's in understanding yourself deeply that you can lend yourself to another person's circumstances and another person's experience.