"I didn’t get much encouragement from home at all because they didn’t know too much about sports. My mum wasn’t that educated enough to know what sports is all about."

"Running and jumping came to me naturally. It was while I took to athletics which was known as track and field then. I took part in basketball, badminton, table tennis, and a few other sports when I was growing up but it was athletics that I stuck to."

"She always had a way with words and they were pretty effective. That didn’t mean she didn’t deal with us when the need arose, but once she was done, you knew that you deserved it."

"It was also not always about money; if she felt you were worth it, she would give you access to her network in furtherance of your goals."

"It is difficult to be strong in those moments [at the death of a loved one]: and when you can't take it anymore, those who love you intervene. On the other hand, it is not even a good example for children to always prove themselves strong. How do you explain to him that you loved someone so much, then he disappears and you are still toned and cheerful? It would have been uneducational and false. I dressed in black, I couldn't bear to see myself in other colors: I would never have imagined it before but at that moment it was like that. Society doesn't allow you to be sad, everyone tells you: "Come on, let's go out"."

"happiness is made up of lights and shadows, it is patchy."

"A platonic love always arises between photographer and model. With Inès de la Fressange there was an immediate feeling. I took the first nude photo of her, for Vogue. And it was Inès who inspired the whole series that followed. (Paolo Roversi)"

"It makes me laugh when I see people chasing nonsense, worrying about a delay or things that, seen five years later, seem like nothing. And to women who think that a designer shoe or piece of jewelery is important, I say: most people don't pay attention to these things. Dress not for your friends but for your own satisfaction: wear what makes you feel good."

"There is a time for everything, at 22 years old you want the handsome, funny, feisty man; to 25 the one who loves books and talks about politics; to 30 choose the father of your children. At 50 you accept that you are not always the winner, at this age you know your defects and your weaknesses; you accept yourself and you also accept the other: you are a bit of a geisha, a bit of an Amazon."

"Better an hour of sleep or spent making love than Botox. Wrinkles are better than cat eyes. You have to accept getting old, the important thing is to be able to desire, at any age you can be willing to change."

"Surprisingly, while the burial arrangements were being planned, little did the world know that there was a smouldering 'war' between her children and their father, Chief Alani Bankole, over the choice of the burial site."

"The ex-wife of Chief Alani Bankole died today, Saturday, January 3, 2015 during her daughter’s wedding, an event she was eagerly looking forward to and had even planned elaborately for."

"A society lady and Iyalode of Gbagura in Ogun State, Chief Mrs. Adunni Bankole, has passed on."

"You can only be yourself,dont try to be any other person."

"Lagos society woman, Iyalode Adunni Bankole is one person who is always in the news. Remember that she is a trained journalist and this possibly explains why she is close to the media and why she is the darling of the media any day. She was in the news a few months back when she clocked 53 and shortly after that, she graduated from a Bible School where she bagged a degree in Theology. Many were surprised because she holds several Chieftaincy titles from Abeokuta, the capital of her home state, Ogun State, among which is the Iyalode of Gbagura, Owu, a title which has become synonymous with her name over the years."

"In life, the late Chief Adunni Bankole was always in the news for the good reason. The renowned Lagos socialite and Iyalode of Gbagura land in Abeokuta, Ogun State, lived a fulfilled life, even to the envy of some. But her death on January 3, 2015 was not only shocking but also dramatic-she died few hours before her daughter, Mopelola's wedding on that red-letter day."

"I believe that all of us are political, in a very broad sense, and – and if I write about a – a housewife that is battered or that is disdained, that’s politics, it’s my understanding of politics, you see. And if I write about women’s issues in general or about a – a waitress that – that has been mistreated by life, that’s politics. So I have been writing these poems through which I – I want to speak for women, you know, to ad, I pretend to – to interpret the feelings of my fellow women and translate them to poetry"

"She is a person who listens more than she speaks."

"Among the finest and most prolific of Nicaraguan poets today are a number of women: Michele Najlis, Vidaluz Menéses, Gioconda Belli, Daisy Zamora, Rosario Murillo, Ana Ilce Gómez, Maríantonia Henríquez, Olivia Silva, among others."

"She is a very good Nicaraguan poet—very, very good."

"I feel that we are the lost generation. We didn’t want to be as our mothers were. We dreamed to be different, we are trying to be different, but we will never be the women we dreamed we were going to be, because we – we have all this burden of the past, calling us every day, we are in no-woman’s land, you know. With cross fire, but we are staying there, to – to be able to – to cross the fire. (BM: And poetry is a record of that journey?) DZ: Yes."

"I don’t believe in heroes and heroines of one day. I believe in heroes and heroines of everyday life, that it is hard enough, you know, to wake every morning and to do what you have to do, no matter what happens in your life."

"In Nicaragua, everybody talks poetry...We have two sports, two national sports. One is baseball, the other one is poetry."

"To be a woman is hard. In any, anywhere. And in all parts of the world, it’s hard."

"almost all women participated in Nicaraguan revolution. But after the revolution, there is a tendency to go back to old patterns, cultural patterns, especially in our countries. So, it was hard for us, women that have gained our space in the revolutionary process, to maintain that space. That’s why my poetry has to do also with the difficulties of everyday life being a woman, because to have a revolution doesn’t mean that – that, you know, it’s a miracle, then everything will change. It’s just the – the starting, it’s the beginning of the change."

"poetry is about truth, about revealing something of our human nature and about the world."

"Poetry makes us be in touch with ourselves, with our communities and with the world at large. It’s like a door we open to our inner self and to the outside and different realities; a bridge that connects us as species in a divided and constantly changing world. I try to express all that through my poetry and I am constantly looking to do it in a way I have not done it before. It is a permanent search for a better way of saying whatever I want and need to say. My poetry also evolves through reading the works of other poets, and through many other readings. It is like an endless personal revolution, an underground river, a relentless inner sea that must keep moving to avoid stagnation and repetition."

"I traveled a lot around the country in those first years working as Vice Minister of Culture and I witnessed that the cultural and artistic explosion that took place in Nicaragua right after the Revolution had no precedent: it was like a renaissance and rebirth of all of the cultural richness which had once been oppressed and buried under the weight of the Somocista dictatorship."

"women were “sold out” by the men that they fought alongside, because those men were uncapable of understanding — much less articulating — a different concept of power."

"There were many women who fought to make a revolution within the Revolution, since power is held by men and they won’t give it away by themselves."

"Many of the truths that poetry reveals are not accepted in this era of so much banality. In this sense, a poet is per se a social activist who, through poetry, shows something that should be acknowledged, but it’s usually overlooked."

"Poetry is essential in the human being, is part of the human essence we all share."

"yo temblaba estremecida como la tierra cuando la parte el rayo."

"Cuerpo vivo, eslabón que asegura la cadena infinita de cuerpos sucesivos."

"‘My success is in my students’ achievements.’"

"I have committed my life to fighting for climate justice, this is our planet, and we are all responsible for taking care of it"

"Human activities are the main contributors to climate change"

"We are all different, and there is a continuous movement. You will need to continually re-invest in it."

"It's just a different perspective end on [the court], and a different view of the world. When you're up close and personal it's not quite the same, so I'm just taking some stats and looking for trends"

"For them to be so composed was fantastic, but I think we'll probably go up and down but we'll go up again and we'll be ready for the grunty bit at the end of the week"

"Laila has a voice that makes you want to go where she tells you,"

"There are a number of extraordinary actresses that can give you a great experience with a play,But there are only a handful that can make you think differently about a play. Laila is one of those. by Edward Albee"

"She is keenly intelligent, and her craft is impeccably strong. Laila’s got huge emotional reserves and is capable of blending that with great control and skill. She has remarkable control of her instrument. by David Esbjornson"

"I know it might sound woo-woo, but every role offers something for me to learn, I don’t know what the lesson is, but once I start to live it, it will become evident."

"In my era, there were so few women that were racing at my level, You never really thought about yourself as: ‘I’m a woman in this race.’ You don’t think of yourself as something else. I was always the underdog because I never had funding and I was always given these cars to drive without any practice — I was always thrown in the deep end. For me it was always a concentration of what I was doing in this race car."

"The biggest problem is there’s never really enough funding for a woman to complete all the steps, It’s opportunity, what team you’re in, the funding you have and so forth. I was expecting someone to come up when I saw one or two drivers come up that had a fair amount of talent, but they never quite got to where they needed to go."

"I never looked back in the race, It’s one of those things, it’s hard to explain … It happens once in a lifetime. You say to yourself: ‘If I get into this corner first and lead the race I’m going to win."

"There are challenges but together we’ll fight these challenges and I believe we’ll make it."

"Back in the day, the music industry was my God"

"And I always want my product to be what's in my heart, so I'm writing and in the sessions. It sounds like me because I'm there."