Quotes from Michaela Coel

'Chewing Gum' ages me 15 years every time I do it - it's insane.

To see people laughing or crying or listening, then being inspired to do their own thing? I can't think of anything better than that.

You have to be true to your instinctive way of writing. You have to find your identity.

I wrote a play at drama school, which was a dark comedy - people laughed and cried. And then my script of one of the shows was picked up by a comedy sketch company... so then I had to write comedy.

I love Jeremy Corbyn, definitely.

If there's anyone out there that looks a bit like me, or just feels a little bit out of place just trying to get into performing, you are beautiful; embrace it. You are intelligent; embrace it. You are powerful; embrace it.

So many of my memories revolve around TV.

'Chewing Gum Dreams' should make you look twice at the girl shouting on the bus and not just cuss her off from your life.

I feel angry with myself the way I handled the Bible and Christianity. A lot more people are more normal with Christianity. I was crazy... telling people you will go to hell. I lost all my friends because of my militant faith.

I definitely believe in spirituality. I like to pray, but I'm not praying to something that I can define; I'm just speaking because I know it does have an effect.

I don't really go with the crowd. I'm the kind of person that if I heard some girls were bullying my friend in another school, I would go to that school by myself and try to have a fight with a hundred girls.

My generation of black British people often feels part American because of what we learned from TV.

I was very unhappy at one point and dealt with my unhappiness by hitting people.

We live in a world where if you're white, an upper-class male of extreme privilege, and able-bodied, and you're nothing that takes you away from that norm, then you're going to have - then the world will not assign you problems because of what you are. That is actually the world we live in.

I'm massively open-minded to pretty much anything.

It strikes me as odd that we've made journeys with our social conditioning in certain areas, but not in others. The world is always changing; discoveries in technology and science relentlessly expose our dearest values as fictions.

Socialisation is not optional. It's an inescapable contract, and our birth into the world is our signature of agreement. Norms and ideologies vary from society to society, and most of them weren't formed during our lifetimes but were handed down from one generation to the next.

I became a very passionate Christian when I was 17. I started writing and performing poetry at different venues across the U.K. I started performing from then, really.

I love Issa Rae. I adore her.

There always seems to be an element of faith in my writing.

It was only when I went to sixth-form college that I encountered boys.

Being fetishized because of my skin? I've definitely encountered that wall of people.

When I was 18, I suddenly became very, very religious. I became an evangelical Christian; I was celibate for five years.

We live in this era where we really enjoy being offended, although only on the Internet. I don't know how beneficial it is. I wonder if we live in an age where we don't have power, yet somehow feel we have virtual power. But I feel like it's a distraction from real life.