Teju Cole
Teju Cole
Teju Coleis a Nigerian-American writer, photographer, and art historian...
NationalityNigerian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth27 June 1975
CityKalamazoo, MI
CountryNigeria
city happen hope organize picture several striking unusual
When I've had enough of words, I go out into the city for a long walk; sometimes I'll go out walking for several miles. And I'll just take photographs and hope for something striking or unusual to happen that I can organize into a picture frame.
artists attention contains example painters specific sustains whose work
Breughel is an example of an artist - I mean, this is true about artists and painters in general, but he is a specific example of an artist whose work contains more than you think it does at first glance. Whose work rewards, sustains attention and looking.
analogue formal joyce literary novel passage reader recognise stories
In 'Open City,' there is a passage that any reader of Joyce will immediately recognise as a very close, formal analogue of one the stories in 'Dubliners.' That is because a novel is also a literary conversation.
fewer pages people
I'd like to meet fewer people who say 'Oh, I want to write a book, here are 10 pages I've written,' and more 'Oh, I want to write a book, here are 300 pages I've written.'
exists societies
Punitive murder by the police and by vigilantes has existed in all societies at some point, and probably still exists in most.
expectations sin sinner
There is an expectation that we can talk about sins but no one must be identified as a sinner...
going-away forget you-choose
Things don't go away just because you choose to forget them.
deception lovers
It wasn't a deception: all lovers live on partial knowledge.
too-short score anxious
Life's too short for anxious score-keeping
bus-stops creative energy
The energies of Lagos life- creative, malevolent, ambiguous- converge at the bus stops
suffering-of-others space helping
There's a reticence necessary when you consider the suffering of others. Into the space created by that reticence, you bring in those things that best help us confront ambiguity: music, painting, film, and so on.
empathy gaps way
I just realized that we're facing here is an empathy gap. And this was just another way to generate conversation about something that nobody wanted to look at.
both poems possessed throughout wrote
Throughout his career, W.G. Sebald wrote poems that were strikingly similar to his prose. His tone, in both genres, was always understated but possessed of a mournful grandeur.
belongs capital combined continues countries courts human legal life mob poor properly rarely societies structural weak
In countries with a properly functioning legal system, the mob continues to exist, but it is rarely called upon to mete out capital punishment. The right to take human life belongs to the state. Not so in societies where weak courts and poor law enforcement are combined with intractable structural injustices.