Toyin Quotes & Sayings

The social media bit is really about documenting process. I like the dialogue if it's constructive, but I'm now at a crossroads. I've accumulated a lot of followers, and it's great, but I'm also at that teetering point where people are feeling themselves a little too much, commenting a little too much. — Toyin Odutola

Ideas are all around you - everything gives you ideas. But the real source is the part of your brain that dreams. — Bruce Coville

The graphic style itself is influenced by a lot of very layered and detailed comics that I read as a kid, like 'Vagabond' by Takehiko Inoue. — Toyin Odutola

Poetry is the most bodily of the arts. — Robert Pinsky

If someone really wants my company's business, why shouldn't he be able to do everything he can - including paying me off - to get that business? Because bribery encourages people to make decisions based on the wrong criteria, which means in the business world that it distorts the efficient allocation of resources. — James Surowiecki

Being a black artist, the first thing people want to talk about is your blackness, the importance of your blackness, and your black presence. — Toyin Odutola

Where some may see flat, static narratives, I see a spectrum of tonal gradations and realities. What I am creating is literally black portraiture with ballpoint pen ink. I'm looking for that in-between state in an individual where the overarching definition is lost. Skin as geography is the terrain I expand by emphasizing the specificity of blackness, where an individual's subjectivity, various realities and experiences can be drawn onto the diverse topography of the epidermis. From there, the possibilities of portraying a fully-fledged person are endless. — Toyin Odutola

I'm Keith," he said, "and you're ... clearly mad, but what's your name? — Maureen Johnson

When I was in school, I conceptually didn't want black people to have context, to take it out of all that history. I wanted nothing to indicate where they are or what time it is, to place them anywhere. — Toyin Odutola

Doing press is like eating at McDonald's: while it's going on it's vaguely enjoyable - you're seduced by your own vanity and taking yourself rather seriously - but immediately afterwards you feel sick. — Emily Mortimer

For a while, I was nervous about portraying women because of the objectification that automatically comes with it, whether the artist intends or not. — Toyin Odutola

It's kind of a language I've developed over time that's basically breaking up the face into components and planes. Inside each plane, I draw gradation marks, and when planes come together, they form sinews, a hairlike weave that's like a landscape of the face. — Toyin Odutola

I moved around a lot when I was a child; two of the houses I grew up in have totally disappeared. One was burnt in a riot, and the other was pulled down. — Toyin Odutola

There was something practically tangible there, like a ray of sun, warming us through to our souls. You could see it, you could feel it, but you couldn't quite capture it in your hands. That didn't mean it wasn't there though. Oh, it was there and it weighted a thousand delicious pounds. I let that pressure inundate me, let it tether me to him. — Fisher Amelie

Toyin Falola has given us what is truly rare in modern African writing: a seriously funny, racy, irreverent package of memories, and full of the most wonderful pieces of poetry and ordinary information. It is a matter of some interest, that the only other volume A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt reminds one of is Ake, by Wole Soyinka. What is it about these Yorubas? — Ama Ata Aidoo

It's not that difficult for most, but the few who think they're entitled to an easy life make it seem like that's the way of the world. — Diane Greenwood Muir

My identity is not based on performance; it's based on something that's pre-determined by someone else, and I don't even understand what that is because I'm an African who came to America. — Toyin Odutola

I needed to create something I could take with me wherever I went. — Toyin Odutola

I kept wanting to push my image as validity; I wanted to see my portrait on a wall and know it was okay. — Toyin Odutola

The love of what you do, combined with your belief in what you do, will not determine your success. It will determine how hard you will work and how dedicated you will be to achieving it. Success just shows up from there. — Jeffrey Gitomer

Enacting same-sex civil marriage would therefore not be an expansion of the institution of marriage, but a redefinition. Finishing what policies like "no-fault" divorce began, and thus entrenching them, it would finally replace the conjugal view with the revisionist view, elevating the latter to the dignity of legal principle. In so doing, it would multiply the marriage revolution's moral and cultural spoils, and make them harder than ever to recover. Or so we shall argue. — Sherif Girgis

I've always felt the portrait is an occasion for marks to happen. I've never viewed the portrait as about the sitter. Even when I go to the National Portrait Gallery, I'm not thinking about the sitter; I'm thinking about how the artist chose that color or that highlight. It becomes about the time, place, and context. — Toyin Odutola

I don't think about race before I start drawing. I think about how to make that mark to fit whatever purpose I need it to fulfill. — Toyin Odutola

I'm really interested in independent publishers and memes and mini comics. But even before that, I was interested in Japanese manga and anime. — Toyin Odutola