"Hollywood is greedy and prone to self-mythologising to conceal that simple greed: the very faults that [[Citizen Kane|[Citizen] Kane]] satirized. The town's treatment of Kane, the definitive account of American desire and corruption on film, is as ludicrous – and sensitive – now as then. Mank, David Fincher's fictionalised account of the creation of Kane, is up for 10 Academy Awards this weekend. If it equals, or even surpasses, its creation myth, it will be a bleak joke: one that both [[Orson Welles|[Orson] Welles]] and [Herman J. Mankiewicz] would get or, if they had the chance, would have written themselves. (Welles died in 1985; Mank in 1953.) It is, consciously or not – and I would guess not - theft masquerading as tribute and that is the only profound truth it tells. This is a bad habit in Hollywood, and one to which it is increasingly addicted."

"Enter the contemptible George Galloway. After Liverpool won the Champions League on Saturday, the former Labour and Respect MP tweeted his congratulations to the winning team ... then traduced Tottenham Hotspur fans, many of whom are Jewish, by writing: "No #Israël flags on the Cup!" He meant: no sticky Jewish fingers on British football."

"Then Jackie Walker of Momentum said, "Anti-Semitism is no more special than any other form of racism." There was an ovation. I think it was the line they had been waiting for. What did I hear in that small sentence? Perhaps I am oversensitive. My mother is a historian of the Holocaust. She has traveled around Europe since the Eighties, teaching people how to teach the Holocaust in the countries where it took place. I can tell you, without recourse to any reference book, that there isn't a favorable mention of Jews in European literature until Gotthold Lessing's The Jews, in 1749. I can tell you that when Edward I expelled the Jews from England in 1290, a ship captain, having taken their money for passage, dumped some on a sandbank, and left them to die. I did not hear a passing remark. I heard a deep rebuke from Walker that spoke of general, and eternal, Jewish immorality: that Jewish concern for Jewish safety and for the memory of Jewish dead is something tainted."

"[At Gold's third visit to Russell Brand's Trews Musings event] There is a deep vein of savagery inside Brand, something completely animalistic, but its twin is there too: something much softer, and terribly vulnerable. Watching these Brands fight it out is, in totality, his allure. His cult is based on the premise that individualism is destroying us. But he cannot shrug off his own ego. It is a very noisy dichotomy. At the end, he loiters. He has long, slow closed-eye hugs with men and women; the air is damp with lust masquerading as political intent. The Trews is not a political experience, not at all. Brand has founded a small religion, and it will not outlive him. He is an addict populating a space vacated by conventional politics; he is a symptom of the very ennui he hates. And he couldn’t swing an election."

"Celebrity involvement in politics is a wretched thing. It should be consigned to dust, especially post-Jimmy Savile – who spent many holidays at Chequers with Margaret Thatcher, during which he used to write "In case of national emergency, phone Jimmy Savile" on every notepad in the house, should you need a nightmarish image to chew on. Have our leaders not learned to hide from these terrible narcissists? Celebrity is trivial, and when it moves close to power, it trivialises that too. The gongs for light entertainment heroes, meanwhile, insult everybody: a gong for a laugh. Is leering on Strictly Come Dancing and clutching female contestants' arms really a public service meriting a knighthood?"

"And so to the church's own holocaust – in Africa. Condoms can protect Africans from Aids. But who can protect them from Ratzinger? The Catholic church has long pursued a no-condoms policy."

"In his actions on child abuse and Aids, Joseph Ratzinger has colluded in the protection of paedophiles and the deaths of millions of Africans. As Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Pope John Paul II's chief enforcer), it was Ratzinger's job to investigate the child abuse scandal that plagued the Catholic church for decades. And how did he do it? In May 2001 he wrote a confidential letter to Catholic bishops, ordering them not to notify the police – or anyone else – about the allegations, on pain of excommunication. He referred to a previous (confidential) Vatican document that ordered that investigations should be handled "in the most secretive way . . . restrained by a perpetual silence". Excommunication is a joke to me, perhaps to you, but to a Catholic it means exclusion and perhaps hellfire – for trying to protect a child. Well, God is love."

"The truth is you have to get on top of the reading as soon as possible and you have to keep in mind that this is the sum of people’s YEARS of hard labour, sweat and pain that you hold in your hands. Without being able to meet all the people who make that thing in your hand possible, you have to conjure up their presence, interact with every single book with great reverence."

"The pandemic has forced a balance in the nation’s perspective where food writing is concerned."

"Attitude hardly counts at all when we are attempting to determine what foods nourish the body. A lot of intolerances and allergies as they concern individual bodies are life and death issues and toxicology issues."

"I am writing all the time on being Nigerian and living in Nigeria but I have been accused of being stylistically un-Nigerian. My direct address of taboo objects, subjects and descriptions of people are supposedly un-Nigerian."

"In Nigeria, we have given ourselves no other option than the institutional use of the English language. We haven’t, in addition, provided the necessity and the resources of mastering the use of multiple languages. And that opportunity is so pertinent."

"There is nothing any of us can do about the fact that the world is shrinking so we need to learn how to speak more languages, not fewer."

"What better way to spend one’s time in the country of fringe dwellers than capitalising on one’s failures? Why wallow in failure? If you can’t beat them, or join them, then you write about them. Yes, it does end up as a kind of power and advantageous positioning in standing out from the crowd because most people don’t want fringe-dweller strength"

"There is a need to speak on something and I don’t agree with the status quo. The self-deprecation probably comes from not fitting in no matter how hard I try."

"If one wants to be a good essayist, one needs to connect and do it at the level of the gut, infiltrate the blood–brain barrier and lose prestige or the footing of pride. Or shall I say, you have to give something of value away to gain the investment of the reader’s time and attention."

"We don’t have a Nigerian culture of cooking and monologuing. It is coming along now with social media and Nigerian food celebrities."

"There are many things that happen in the human being that bypass the brain."

"Investing one’s own disadvantage in words: Opening an artery onto the page, that kind of thing, apart from a love for the theme being written on."

"The more handling of a wide variety of food that one can manage the more open one’s mind and palate."

"When CNN does not reciprocate with simple engagement with our hills and valleys, our romantic ideals, often only with our traumas. And everyone in the world has trauma. If you know where Naples is or Mount Vesuvius, then you are clever."

"Parents have a lot of professing power over their children. Praise and admonishments are crafting tools like names."

"There are so many dissimilarities, so many unique points of difference between this one country in Africa and the rest of the world."

"I do not see myself as being exceptional, I see myself as the product, through personal application, of what I wish for all women and indeed all men everywhere."

"women are a powerful force for change across the globe. ."

"One of the greatest ironies of writing is that you can write for a hundred years, write reams, but until you have something that resembles a book, you are never allowed to call yourself an author."

"Pouring more money in a broken system does only fund more inefficiencies, because often, we don’t think and act in results and learning outcomes are results."

"At the end, if you think about Africa and the Middle East, there is a huge lack of leadership. It has to be integrated with ethics. Maybe the human side of leadership is the most important piece."

"Leadership is about the decisions you make and the conversations you have. It is also about the time you give."

"When we meet together I remind them that the goal for a championship is like any other big marathon."

"Everything that is required for you to succeed begins with your mental state."

"You can run at any time, any where, given the conditions."

"Institutions…could support the development of the whole ecosystem through knowledge building or creating a taskforce with other fiduciary investors and the ecosystem of dedicated impact bond managers. They have big capacities to bring systematic change, in advocacy and conversation with governments"

"We need more financial resources directed at education because we have more children, and also because 21st-century skills are more complex than anything that has been taught before. On the other side, the way that we are currently spending money as a society on education is not bringing the results we want to achieve."

"Education has been a neglected child globally; it has been seen as a national problem and has not really attracted much attention. Outside of the education bubble, I do not think that people are really aware of the true scale of the problem."

"Around 330 million children are in school, but not learning. There are bodies in classrooms, but not educated minds."

"While people build their skills in technical abilities, it is important for them to foster a culture of digital literacy and innovation as a way of lifelong learning skills and ultimately enhancing employability."

"KNUST believes in constructive partnership and we cherish the kind of partnership that we enjoy with our industrial partners. And we welcome them to even help us to commercialise all these research outcomes that are coming. They should come and take it up and then take it all out there, so that it will be very beneficial to society."

"This will help in making technological findings more relevant to the daily needs of society, instead of leaving them to gather dust on shelves."

"The problems of society are our problems. And we go through research to proffer solutions to the problems of humanity. In that sense, what we say is that, if we carry out these research, we must ensure that the research or the outcomes of this research are impacting the people for whom the research are carried out."

"There is need for enhanced collaboration between academia and industry, in order to stimulate development in the country."

"I call on industry professionals to utilise the research from the University and the academic community to transform society."

"Students should build digital skills and literacy to enhance their employability."

"The world was now going digital, and everyone needed to embrace it, saying, KNUST was taking bold steps to encourage students to embrace e-space and succeed in their training."

"I hope to increase the visibility of KNUST and improve alumni and government relations."

"I want impactful research and innovation, infrastructure development and effective community, as well as stakeholder engagement, to drive the vision."

"But as our motto clearly says, ‘Nyansapo wosane no badwemma’, as an institution, we share the responsibility of thinking deeply to provide innovative solutions and to harness the opportunities inherent in the pandemic."

"The global higher education community including KNUST is required to pursue new strategies to deliver."

"KNUST stands for relevant research, quality teaching, entrepreneurship training and provision of service to our stakeholders with or without COVID-19."

"We will maintain our focus as Leaders in Change in the training of highly skilled 21st-century entrepreneurial graduates for social, economic and technological advancements."