Mugabe's become a disgrace to Africa. And I must say this because I am an African and a lot of us looked up to him back in the 1980s when he was the liberation hero. But he's now turned himself into a murderous despot.
I'm used to being the only black guy. I've seriously walked onstage, looked out in the audience, 15,000 people - and I'm the only one in the place. It's no big deal. My whole career's been like that.
That's been the tragedy of my life, actually. I've always looked younger than I am.
I traveled to Ireland to research 'Sandcastles,' to visit the coastline where my ancestors looked toward America, the tiny town they once loved so much, and the docks from which they sailed toward their dreams of building a better life for their family. The answers I found on that journey are woven through the novel.
My aunt looked like Lucille Ball, and everything she touched was beautiful and elegant. But I was intelligent enough to understand I would never be like her.
I remember, when I was at school, we would have a 10-minute storytelling session where we'd all sit on the floor cross-legged, and the teacher would read. It became something we all really looked forward to. That was part of the reason I grew to love stories.
Everywhere on the Continent, the tourist is looked upon as a bird to be plucked, and presently the bird himself feebly comes to regard plucking as his proper destiny and abjectly holds out his wing so long as there is a feather left on it.
I was happy being a lawyer, and the thought of becoming a model or even actor never came to my mind, even though I knew I looked good.
My mum had a massive influence on me, not just in what she wore and how she looked, but in her spirit. She was married to one of the most famous men in the world, and she didn't wear any makeup, ever. I mean, have you ever seen the wife of a man like that rock up with no makeup on? Because I haven't since.
Since I was a kid, I inherited my dad's love for animals and wildlife, even for the ones we had around the house in the French countryside, a 'smaller' kind of nature. Then, as I grew up, I looked more deeply into the African continent and its wildlife.
I think when Madonna did sexy stuff, she looked more in control. And I think it looked more like she was breaking boundaries. Today, it feels like it's pandering to everything that's wrong, and I don't think it's nice, especially for young girls.
Suits are looked at more now as a business thing which is kind of a shame. If you're not wearing it just for work, you should try and trick it up a bit.
I was one of those kids who found it difficult to eat anything that looked like an animal.
I never looked at myself as the fat sister. Sometimes I would beat people to the punch and say, 'Oh I'm the fat, funny one,' because that's what people would say about me. But I never really thought that.
I find it difficult to believe that Redditors don't understand that anonymity online is merely a facade; indeed, it's probably one of the reasons that revealing the identity of pseudonymous Redditors is looked on as such a huge betrayal.
I spent my life playing heroes because I looked like one.
The Olympics are very proprietary about letting others promote and market what's going on, so we shut down for 17 days, and they don't let us do a whole lot in return for giving our players to them. We don't get compensated, and we've never looked for compensation.
I was raised in Kenya, and I always wanted to be an actor from when I was really, really little, but the first time I thought it was something that I could make a career of was when I watched 'The Color Purple.' I think I was nine, maybe, and I saw people that looked like me - Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah.
People looked at my early pictures and called them the most disgusting things ever, and now 'Hairspray' is being done at every school in Britain and America.
Almost as soon as I went vegan, people started telling me that my skin looked great, and that I appeared younger, slimmer, and healthier. I'm convinced that of all the changes I've made to my lifestyle, it's the adoption of a vegan diet that has been best for me - physically, mentally, and certainly spiritually.
I had the longest, biggest bowl cut. It looked like I had a perfectly straightened mop on the top of my head.
When I was a teenager, I had pimples - oh, God, every time someone looked at my face I thought they were looking at my pimples. I put mud on my face to dry them out, and it worked.
I grew up playing on unprepared surfaces where your wicket depended on quickly adapting to the bounce. As a kid, I could never differentiate off-spin from leg-spin. All I looked to do was to try to hit the ball before it pitched.
My mom used to tell me stories at night, read books to me - and I read 'em over and over and over again. And you know what I learned from that? I went back and looked at everything - Why do I like reading the same stories over and over and over again? What, was I some kind of nincompoop? No - the narrative gave me connection with my mom.
I had always been literary, in the sense of loving poetry and discovering novels, but I found my voice, as they say, in an office full of elderly people who looked after blind ex-servicemen.
There wasn't anyone who was specifically taking me under their wing. I definitely looked up to people, though, one major person being Naomi Campbell, of course. That's, like, a given.
When my son was 3 years old - I'll never forget this - there was this homeless guy walking toward us, and my son looked at me, and he said, 'Who's your buddy?'
It was amazing for me to play a character opposite Benedict Cumberbatch - he's someone who I've looked up to for years - and the idea that I would work with him and then become friends with him was an amazing experience.
When the women's movement started in the 1960s, there was a vision of a future where women didn't wear makeup or worry about how their hair looked, and everybody wore sensible, comfortable clothes. It ran into an absolute brick wall.
With a track like 'White Christmas,' everybody has done that song in every format you can imagine, so I just looked at the chords at that particular song and what chords would make it work. That's kind of quite a sad song, and I had this idea of someone singing it in the subway, someone who is homeless, old and sad.
When I was writing for children, I was writing genre fiction. It was like making a good chair. However beautiful it looked, it needed four legs of the same length, it had to be the right height and it had to be comfortable.
I always doubted myself. I doubted the way I looked, my body, my voice - everything.
I had the sense when I looked back over my life I would actually see a mess of decisions, a few of which I had thought about, some of which I had sort of stumbled on and many that I had no control over whatsoever.
I gravitated to Judy Blume early on. 'Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing' was my favorite, with a realistic and relatable protagonist in Peter Hatcher. When I reached the fourth grade, I made the leap to science fiction and never looked back.
When I went to college, I met a new group of friends and looked back on my high-school experience and realized how much time I had wasted on trying to make myself something I wasn't.
When my first daughter was born, my husband held her in his hands and said, 'My God, she's so beautiful.' I unwrapped the baby from her blankets. She was average size, with long thin fingers and a random assortment of toes. Her eyes were close set, and she had her father's hooked nose. It looked better on him.
