When we were in Egypt, we were refugees. My family and I were homeless. For five years, out of all of the countries in the world that my father was contacting, the only one that took us in was England.

I grew up in Brixton as a young teenager playing basketball for the Brixton Topcats, which marked the beginning of my career.

A lot of people experience racism at different times on different terms.

In Africa, kids don't look at black athletes and say, 'They're different from us.' They look at them and say, 'That can be me.'

I had this one teacher, and as I got older and translated things he used to say, it was racist and hatred stuff he was saying toward me and my brother.

In England, I'm just another tall guy!

My whole life, I've been getting used to adapting. There are small differences, but culturally, the States and the U.K. are very close.

I love a fry-up. They don't do them in the States.

Egypt was tough without our parents. My brothers and sisters had to work day by day, and every time they collected a pay cheque, they brought it into the house and put it on the table. That's how we lived.

My older brother played professionally in Europe. My other older brother went to UConn on scholarship, finished his education in political science, then he went on and played in Europe for years. My other brother played in Europe.

I have friends who ended up playing professionally in the Middle East and Europe.

To me, somebody can say what they want about me all day, whether it's my game or my personality or who I am as a human being.

Whatever the issue is, whether it's Ebola or something else, I just want to get involved. Sometimes, even if it's just my time or my words, if my involvement changes people from donating $1 to $2, then I'll do it.

I remember when I was a kid, as a refugee in Egypt, every day, there was always a hope that we'd get to leave tomorrow and we'd get to go somewhere.

Nobody ever remembers the worst film they ever saw.

Man, I hate vegetables.

I know that, me being from Sudan and London, it's a big honour to have even made it to the NBA.

Life is about going through things and learning along the way.

I don't think it changes who you are inside. But when you have a lot of money, it makes a lot of things easier. That's why everyone wants to be successful.

In basketball, the legs are the most important part of your body. A lot of people think it's the upper body because you shoot with your arms, but your legs are always carrying you, so if you don't lift leg weights, your muscles will be easily fatigued.

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

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.

What colonialism does is cause an identity crisis about one's own culture.

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

Dreams are the foundation of Hollywood. And dreams are the foundation of America.

I always love to learn new things. That's the reason I like being an actor.

There is something about acting that's mysterious and magical because there is only so much I can do to prepare, and then I have to just let go and breathe and believe that it will come through.

I didn't love my hair when I was a child. It was lighter than my skin, which made me not love it so much. I was really kind of envious of girls with thicker, longer, more lush hair.

In the madness, you have to find calm.

What's becoming very obvious to me is that fashion is art.

It's great to have something to dress up for. You know, I spent three years in slacks at drama school, so now I like putting a dress on.

I was part of a growing community of women who were secretly dealing with harassment by Harvey Weinstein. But I also did not know that there was a world in which anybody would care about my experience with him.

Growing up, I had really bad skin. I had a skin disorder. Yes, I did. And my mother went to great lengths to try to find something to remedy it. I remember she took a trip to Madagascar and came back with all these alternative, medicinal herbs and stuff. They didn't smell so good, but I think they worked some magic.

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.

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

I grew up in a world where the majority of people were black, so that wasn't the defining quality of anyone. When you're describing someone, you don't start out with 'he's black, he's white.'

That's such a powerless place for me to think about: what is working against me. I don't think of what I don't have; I think of what I do and use that to get the next thing.

Whoopi Goldberg looked like me, she had hair like mine, she was dark like me. I'd been starved for images of myself. I'd grown up watching a lot of American TV. There was very little Kenyan material, because we had an autocratic ruler who stifled our creative expression.

I was born in Mexico because my father was teaching at a school in Mexico City. I was born during the third year he was there. And when I was 16, I returned to Mexico to learn Spanish.

There's always a sense of newness with acting, because every role, you come to every role fresh.

As actors, you become an expert at starting over.

As human beings, we aren't as individual as we'd like to believe we are. And I think that's what makes acting possible. Despite the fact that I have not experienced something, I have it in my human capacity to imagine it and to put myself in someone else's shoes, and to take someone else's circumstances personally.

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

I loved make-believe. I was the child in the cupboard playing with my Barbies.

I value not being good at things, because children are not good at things.

Slavery is something that is all too often swept under the carpet. The shame doesn't even belong to us, but we still experience it because we're a part of the African race. If it happened to one, it happened to all. We carry that burden.

I love filmmaking, but I decided to go to drama school because I thought that when I'm 60 and looking back on my life, if acting hadn't been a part of it, I would hate myself.

I'm Mexican and Kenyan at the same time. I've seen the quarrels over my nationality, but I'm Kenyan and Mexican at the same time. So again, I am Mexican-Kenyan, and I am fascinated by carne asada tacos.

Being considered a fashion star is wonderful. It's definitely a bonus thing.

I grew up in Nairobi, which is the capital of Kenya, so it's hustle and bustle, and there's always something going on.