"But instead my mother was the happiest woman in Cameroon as her daughter that she long waited 15 years to bring to the world was carrying a whole country in her hands."

"Playing in front of my family and friends was the best thing that ever happened to my career. Being able to carry my country to the final was my dream but doing it in front of my loved ones was a dream come true. I will never forget the [FIBA Women's ] AfroBasket 2015 in Cameroon because that year was a turning-point in my career and a year my father would have been so proud of me"

"I have so much basketball to play. My daughter Diana will watch me play and I know my country is still counting on me to lead them to the gold medal. My fans are waiting for my return and I will not disappoint them. I will fight like I always do and having my daughter in the background is a plus for me."

"I dreamed, I worked hard, I received."

"As one of the leaders, it is my job to bring Cameroon back to the top with help of other players"

"You know, the last coach of my career coached Sinner for several years, so I got to play with him a few times. So, you know, I'm always rooting for him"

"I've dreamed of having a family since I was very young because I'm very close to my mom and to my parents, I would love to have that connection in the future with hopefully my child. I don't see myself having a child and then coming back."

"I think the men's game is in a good state"

"I just like his humble approach to the sport. I love seeing the younger generation. There's an aura about the men's game, it's very evident. They have different styles of play, different personalities, from different parts of the world, and it's just fun to see these rivalries come together."

"It teaches you so many lessons. Certainly all of these are part of it. I continue to learn from it. I don't know if there are some things so challenging and so rewarding at the same time within one week or two weeks, the emotions that you feel, that I'll maybe ever get in my life"

"My son is Mr. Entertainer, Extrovert. In a room full of people, he’s that kid who stands out. He loves socialising and is so independent. He even has an exhibition coming up in September and is also a pianist. OMG, he is everything"

"I’m done shrinking. I’m going to grow. I’m going to grow taller than you. I’m going to grow so tall you won’t be able to climb me."

"What and how do we remember and what do we forget? What do we want to remember and forget? How does history become a legend and legend a myth? Sofia Andrukhovych reveals to the reader an interlace of stories about human destinies, which form a mosaic of collective Ukrainian memory. A very timely book for modern Ukraine. After all, the future belongs to those who are not afraid to look back and look in the mirror."

"In Ukraine, death has become an integral part of everyday life"

"Until the last sentence of writing it is always uncertainty"

"Everyone who receives power involuntarily feels omnipotent…superior to all others who fantasize about freedom. But what do we know about the dependencies of those who are themselves omnipotent?"

"I love a role that I can ground somewhere in myself. There are actors who love to extend themselves, I like to find extensions of myself."

"I had to heal so much so that I am able to understand that my children are born through me but belong to God. In that way, I don’t project onto them. I’m even counting down the years until my son leaves home to go flourish,” she jokes—yet it’s clear she’s deeply intentional about preparing them for the world while also allowing them to discover their own callings"

"That’s why they get along so well. My daughter doesn’t want the spotlight and my son thrives in it. There’s no competition—just harmony"

"My daughter, on the other hand, is introverted. So graceful, so beautiful. She has this quiet confidence"

"My children are like black and white, the most different ever. And I love it"

"I want society to be comfortable with these kinds of conversations—conversations that matter"

"My dad is actually the one who suggested a doctor and by the time we got there, I was already convinced. I was convincing my family she was on the spectrum. I was just happy to get that confirmation. And I’m happy to always talk about it to normalise it"

"So when my daughter received her diagnosis, it became a moment of clarity—one that also helped me better understand my own family’s history"

"When my daughter got her diagnosis as being on the autistic spectrum, that was enlightening. More than anything, it helped us understand our family genetics. Back then, there wasn’t much information. You didn’t have a name for things, but we were always very sensory sensitive"

"It’s through my kids that I’ve come to better understand myself and see what else I still need to work on"

"I pride myself on working on myself as often as I can, and I finally reached a place of real self-awareness after I had kids. For example, I’ve always known I was neurodivergent—I have ADHD—but I didn’t fully understand the effects, especially how it ties into anxiety"

"Being a mom is like a passion project that doesn’t stop"

"My kids are like my own dopamine"

"Motherhood is healing. When done in the right way, it’s healing because you have to heal. You are forced to look at yourself and heal, so it’s humbling as well"

"Zakes and I went for many sessions of marriage counselling before tying the knot. Those sessions were very insightful into what married life was like and preparing to make that transition from being someone’s boyfriend or girlfriend into being a wife and husband,"

"A lot of people were surprised about the wedding, but not us and especially not my parents. By the time Zakes proposed, my parents already knew because he asked them for my hand in marriage. So technically I was the last to know."

"Make sure your relationship is between you and the person you love, no one has power over it, no one has a say over it and people will always talk, we were laughing. People will try and break something that’s beautiful, there’s nothing you can do"

"Growing up I definitely wanted to be a lawyer. It was all I could think of or speak about. I did go to law school for a year, I was at the University of Cape Town in the law programme. Once I started studying, I didn’t know if it was for me, especially learning about the industry and the sector, the opportunities – it just didn’t feel like a good fit."

"It was a means to act, to write my own stuff so that I could act in it. I really fell in love with it and tried hard to get good at it and hone that craft."

"Acting was the thing I wanted to do; it was the passion"

"I didn't know what he was going to look like, but I wondered what my dream man was doing. I made this relationship a reality. True love exists."

"I figured out how to set myself apart and create my own name and really figure out what that meant."

"You have those times when you’re trying to fit a square into a circle. I’ve been through girl groups. I went through people saying I didn’t have it. I wasn’t special or I didn’t have the look. It really affects a person’s spirit. My manager, she told me that, ‘You are enough.’ And she also told me that it’s okay to be vulnerable. I took it and applied it to my artistry and it really helped me evolve into what you see now."

"You don’t always need all of the bells and the whistles. I learned in my life, throughout my journey, that I’m enough. I don’t need all of the extras. I just live my truth, and as long as I do that, I feel like I’ll be good in whatever circumstance. I apply that to life, to my music, to being a young lady out here. I just have to live my truth and know that it’s okay to rock on my own vibration, because I’m me. I try to stand by that code, especially as a young Black woman in this industry. I try to walk the walk and talk the talk."

"You don’t always have to take yourself so seriously all of the time. It still should be a joyful experience in making music. You can definitely hear that in my album. And I really learned that you should seize the moment; you should be present in the moment. It was just a great time musically for me. I evolved so much during Opera Noir, during my album, and it’s just so apparent in the music, in the delivery and the execution of it all. So I’m proud of it."

"I really love to do it all, but singing has opened so many doors for me. And that’s definitely a true passion of mine. It’s a natural, God-given gift. I always find comfort in singing, so singing is number one. Acting, modeling: those go hand-in-hand and I enjoy those too."

"I think the ANC can feature in those things even if they are made up of black people"

"I’ve seen these people in the ANC who just don’t care about the issues that affect less privileged people because they don’t have to care,” Lesego says."

"If you’re a chubby or plus-size girl or whatever you want to call it, you’re the comically funny friend. You’re always going to be that friend in the corner who’s like, ‘girrrl’ or whatever sassy little comment. It’s irritating."

"I’m not thin. Being in this industry and being told ‘it’s difficult to imagine you in any role because you’re not thin’ was quite frustrating."

"When I lived in South Africa, I was very nervous if people would laugh at me instead of with me."

"The thing that helped most of their peers get out was business, medicine and law. And there weren’t a lot of artists in their spaces who were able to make the money they made and give their children what they gave their children."

"I understand being the first generation of black people who kind of made it out, my parents were very nervous about acting."

"When you go to certain schools and live a certain life, you’re going to have blind spots. Kelz helps me identify my own blind spots"