Nkuli Sibeko

“Don’t wait around for someone to give you money before you put the words on paper or on screen as the case may be. Every great screenwriter had the script first and then the money came after. Too many writers want to be paid up front. Sadly that’s not how this business works. You create a beautiful script and then you sell it.”

“Writers write because they have to. So write.”

“Motherhood is personal and individual. Every mother makes decisions for her kids and forms her family the way she wants it. The world tends to judge mothers too harshly for being human and has super human expectations towards them.”

“We all have to eat. It’s a human unifier.”

“Friendship is universal. My friendships have saved my life. My friends are the family I have chosen for myself.”

“This is a mistake. A huge mistake. One I made. I did this. I went into my marriage and sacrificed huge parts of myself to be a ‘good’ wife, to be a ‘good’ mother, and to be a ‘good’ daughter-in-law. I gave up parts of my career, hobbies, and many friends to fit into some bizarre construct of what and who I was supposed to be now that I was a married woman. I even gave up my love for exploring and tinkering in the kitchen. That was the last straw.”

“I’ve never met a recipe I haven’t altered or added something to. Made it my own, which is the beauty for people that love to cook. As a writer, I do the same thing, I understand the rules of a genre and then make them my own to tell a story in my own way. The same way I put my feeling into the food I feed my family and friends, is the same way I pour my emotions and feeling into my writing.”

“I feel that cooking and eating is more than a biological need. I look at it as an emotional and sometimes (when I get things right) an artistic expression.”