Chimamanda Quotes

#1. The point of diversity workshops, or multicultural talks, was not to inspire any real change but to leave people feeling good about themselves. They did not want the content of her ideas; they merely wanted the gesture of her presence. They had not read her blog but they had heard that she was a "leading blogger" about race. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#2. He blamed her for making him a person who was not entirely in control of what he was feeling. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#3. what I hope for Chizalum is this: that she will be full of opinions, and that her opinions will come from an informed, humane and broad-minded place. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#4. She was uncomfortable with what the professors called "participation," and did not see why it should be part of the final grade; it merely made students talk and talk, class time wasted on obvious words, hollow words, sometimes meaningless words. It had to be that Americans were taught, from elementary school, to always say something in class, no matter what. They never said, "I don't know." They said, instead, "I'm not sure," which did not give any information but still suggested the possibility of knowledge. They avoided giving direct instructions: they did not say "Ask somebody upstairs"; they said "You might want to ask somebody upstairs." When you tripped and fell, when you choked, when misfortune befell you, they did not say, "Sorry." They said "Are you okay?" when it was obvious that you were not. And when you said "Sorry" to them when they choked or tripped or encountered misfortune, they replied, eyes wide with surprise, "Oh, it's not your fault. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#5. They reminded Ifemelu of television commercials, of people whose lives were lived always in flattering light, whose messes were still aesthetically pleasing. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#6. Philadelphia was the smell of the summer sun, of burnt asphalt, of sizzling meat from food carts tucked into street corners, foreign brown men and women hunched inside. Ifemelu would come to like the gyros from those carts, flatbread and lamb and dripping sauces, as she would come to love Philadelphia itself. It did not raise the spectre of intimidation as Manhattan did; it was intimate but not provincial, a city that might yet be kind to you. Ifemelu #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#7. She had come to understand that American parenting was a juggling of anxieties, and that it came with having too much food: a sated belly gave Americans time to worry that their child might have a rare disease that they had just read about, made them think that they had the right to protect their child from disappointment and want and failure. A sated belly gave Americans the luxury of praising themselves for being good parents, as if caring for one's child were the exception rather than the rule. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#8. He did not want me to seek the whys, because there are some things that happen for which we can formulate no whys, for which whys simply do not exist and, perhaps, are not necessary. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#9. I like the U.S. and feel gratitude towards it. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#10. I discovered race in America and it fascinated me. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#11. How was it possible to miss something you no longer wanted? #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#12. I realized that I was African when I came to the United States. Whenever Africa came up in my college classes, everyone turned to me. It didn't matter whether the subject was Namibia or Egypt; I was expected to know, to explain. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#13. There were people thrice her size on the Trenton platform and she looked admiringly at one of them, a woman in a very short skirt. She thought nothing of slender legs shown off in miniskirts
it was safe and easy, after all, to display legs of which the world approved
but the fat woman's act was about the quiet conviction that one shared only with oneself, a sense of rightness that others failed to see. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#14. Papa said that the parish priest in Abba was not spiritual enough. That was the problem with our people, Papa told us, our priorities were wrong; we cared too much about huge church buildings and mighty statues. You would never see white people doing that. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#15. Oh, my God,' she said, between sobs. 'Oh, my God.'
Olanna reached out often to squeeze her arm. The rawness of Edna's grief made her helpless, brought the urge to stretch her hand into the past and reverse history. Finally, Edna fell asleep. Olanna gently placed a pillow beneath her head and sat thinking about how a single act could reverberate over time and space and leave stains that could never be washed off. She thought about how ephemeral life was, about not choosing misery. She would move back to Odenigbo's house. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#16. She liked that he wore their relationship so boldly, like a brightly colored shirt. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#17. Talk to her about sex, and start early. It will probably be a bit awkward, but it is necessary. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#18. The knowledge of cooking does not come pre-installed in a vagina. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#19. Sometimes, mothers, so conditioned to be all and do all, are complicit in diminishing the role of fathers. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#20. I can't believe it. My president is black like me. She read the text a few times, her eyes filling with tears. On #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#21. The only race that matters is the human race. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#22. I had consumed a lot of American culture, but I was not quite prepared for the reality of American poverty. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#23. The actual tragedy of Emmett Till, he had told her once, was not the murder of a black child for whistling at a white woman but that some black people thought: But why did you whistle? #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#24. (To clarify, when white people say dark they mean Greek or Italian but when black people say dark they mean Grace Jones.) #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#25. We do not just risk repeating history if we sweep it under the carpet, we also risk being myopic about our present. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#26. It was not a physical fatigue - he went to the gym regularly and felt better than he had in years - but a draining lassitude that numbed the margins of his mind. He got up and went out to the verandah; the sudden hot air, the roar of his neighbor's generator, the smell of diesel exhaust fumes brought a lightness to his head. Frantic winged insects flitted around the electric bulb. He felt, looking out at the muggy darkness farther away, as if he could float, and all he needed to do was to let himself go. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#27. Bristling with half-baked knowledge from the books we had read. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#28. Teach her that if you criticize X in women but do not criticize X in men, then you do not have a problem with X, you have a problem with women. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#29. Are you kidding me?' Shan asked, slightly drunk, slightly dramatic, and now sitting yoga style on the floor. 'You can't write an honest novel about race in this country. If you write about how people are really affected by race, it'll be too obvious. Black writers who do literary fiction in this country, all three of them, not the ten thousand who write those bullshit ghetto books with the bright covers, have two choices: they can do precious or they can do pretentious. When you do neither, nobody knows what to do with you. So if you're going to write about race, you have to make sure it's so lyrical and subtle that the reader who doesn't read between the lines won't even know it's about race ... ' p.335 #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#30. Lots of liberal white folks are looking for black friends. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#31. Please do not go to Kmart and buy twenty pairs of jeans because each costs five dollars. The jeans are not running away. They will be there tomorrow at an even more reduced price. You are now in America: do not expect to have hot food for lunch. That African taste must be abolished. When you visit the home of an American with some money, they will offer to show you their house. Forget that in your house back home, your father would throw a fit if anyone came close to his bedroom. We all know that the living room was where it stopped and, if absolutely necessary, then the toilet. But please smile and follow the American and see the house and make sure you say you like everything. And do not be shocked by the indiscriminate touching of American couples. Standing in line at the cafeteria, the girl will touch the boy's arm and the boy will put his arm around her shoulder and they will rub shoulders and back and rub rub rub, but please do not imitate this behavior. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#32. She was taking two sides at once, to please everyone; she always chose peace over truth, was always eager to conform. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#33. Let's have a child," he said again. "A little girl just like you, and we will call her Obianuju because she will complete us. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#34. They looked at the world with an impractical, luminous earnestness that moved her, but never convinced her. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#35. His mind had not changed at the same pace as his life, and he felt a hollow space between himself and the person he was supposed to be. He #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#36. You looked like the kind of person who will do something because you want to, and not because everyone else is doing it. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#37. Darkness descended on him, and when it lifted, he knew that he would never see Kainene again and that his world would always be like a candlelit room; he would see things only in shadow, only in half glimpses. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#38. Gender and class are different. Poor men still have the privileges of being men, even if they do not have the privileges of being wealthy. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#39. There are two answers to the things they will teach you about our land: the real answer and the answer you give in school to pass. You must read books and learn both answers. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#40. Besides, humility had always seemed to him a specious thing, invented for the comfort of others; you were praised for humility by people because you did not make them feel any more lacking than they already did. It was honesty that he valued; #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#41. The little boy had a delightful curious face. "Do you live in London?" he asked Obinze. "Yes," Obinze said, but that yes did not tell his story, that he lived in London indeed but invisibly, his existence like an erased pencil sketch; each time he saw a policeman, or anyone in a uniform, anyone with the faintest scent of authority, he would fight the urge #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#42. The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#43. Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I'm Jamaican or I'm Ghanaian. America doesn't care. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#44. It was not as if he did not know what living in Lagos could do to a woman married to a young and wealthy man, how easy it was to slip into paranoid about 'Lagos girls,' those sophisticated monsters of glamour who swallowed husbands whole, slithering them down their throats. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#45. Periods are normal and natural, and the human species would not be here if periods did not exist. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#46. I was stained by failure. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#47. What if the parents, from the beginning, taught both children to cook Indomie? Cooking, by the way, is a useful and practical life skill for a boy to have - I've never
thought it made much sense to leave such a crucial thing - the ability to nourish oneself
- in the hands of others. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#48. You deserve to take up space. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#49. she thought that the romance novelists were wrong and it was men, not women, who were the true romantics. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#50. In teaching her about oppression, be careful not to turn the oppressed into saints. Saintliness is not a prerequisite for dignity. People who are unkind and dishonest are still human, and still deserve dignity. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#51. Being a feminist is like being pregnant. You either are or you are not. You either believe in the full equality of men and women or you do not. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#52. If she likes makeup, let her wear it. If she likes fashion, let her dress up. But if she doesn't like either, let her be. Don't think that raising her feminist means forcing her to reject femininity. Feminism and femininity are not mutually exclusive. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#53. He lived in London indeed but invisibly, his existence like an erased pencil sketch #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#54. The idea that sex is something a woman gives a man, and she loses something when she does that, which again for me is nonsense. I want us to raise girls differently where boys and girls start to see sexuality as something that they own, rather than something that a boy takes from a girl. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#55. Hair away from her face, as though one hand could not possibly tame all that hair. "How nice to meet you," she said to Ifemelu, smiling, as they shook hands, her hand small, #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#56. Because human beings lived then in a world in which physical strength was the most
important attribute for survival; the physically stronger person was more likely to lead.
And men in general are physically stronger. (There are of course many exceptions.)
Today, we live in a vastly diʃerent world. The person more qualiɹed to lead is not the
physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more
creative, more innovative. And there are no hormones for those attributes. A man is as
likely as a woman to be intelligent, innovative, creative. We have evolved. But our
ideas of gender have not evolved very much. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#57. We all have our moments of initiation into the Society of Former Negroes. Mine was in a class in undergrad when I was asked to give the black perspective, only I had no idea what that was. So I just made something up. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#58. I am a person who believes in asking questions, in not conforming for the sake of conforming. I am deeply dissatisfied - about so many things, about injustice, about the way the world works - and in some ways, my dissatisfaction drives my storytelling. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#59. One of the things that struck me when I came to the U.S. was discovering American poverty. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#60. Why do you need so much outside of yourself? Why isn't what you are enough? #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#61. Teach her to reject likeability. Her job is not to make herself likeable, her job is to be her full self, a self that is honest and aware of the equal humanity of other people. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#62. You can have ambition
But not too much
You should aim to be successful
But not too successful
Otherwise you will threaten the man #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#63. It is easy to say, 'But women can just say no to all this.' But the reality is more difficult, more complex. We are all social beings. We internalize ideas from our socialization. Even #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#64. She had seen that look before, on the faces of white women, strangers on the street, who would see her hand clasped in Curt's and instantly cloud their faces with that look. The look of people confronting a great tribal loss. It was not merely because Curt was white, it was the kind of white he was, the untamed golden hair and handsome face, the athlete's body, the sunny charm and the smell, around him, of money. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#65. As we drove back to Enugu, I laughed loudly,above Fela's stringent singing. I laughed because Nsukka's untarred roads coat cars with dust in the harmattan and with sticky mud in the rainy season. Because the tarred roads spring potholes like surprise presents and the air smells of hills and history and the sunlight scatters the sand and turns it into gold dust. Because Nsukka could free something deep inside your belly that would rise up to your throat and come out as freedom song. As laughter.(299) #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#66. The vice chancellor announced that all evening classes were cancelled and everyone had to be indoors by 9 p.m. This did not make much sense to me, since the shooting happened in sparkling daylight #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#67. When Ifemelu met Obinze, she told Aunty Uju that she had met the love of her life, and Aunty Uju told her to let him kiss and touch but not to let him put it inside #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#68. Ifemelu sensed that the magazine was a hobby for Aunty Onenu, a hobby that meant something, but still a hobby. Not a passion. Not something that consumed her. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#69. Ojiugo often asked, 'But are they treating you well? Are they treating you well?' as though the treatment was what mattered, rather than the blighted reality of it all, that he was in a holding center, about to be deported. Nobody behaved normally. They were all under the spell of his misfortune. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#70. Nature's first green is gold. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#71. And begin a life in which she alone determined the margins. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#72. I was once talking about gender and a man said to me, "Why does it have to be you as a woman? Why not you as a human being?" This type of question is a way of silencing a person's specific experiences. Of course I am a human being, but there are particular things that happen to me in the world because I am a woman. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#73. Teach her never to universalize her own standards or experiences. Teach her that her standards are for her alone, and not for other people. This is the only necessary form of humility: the realization that difference is normal. Tell #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#74. Racism should never have happened and so you don't get a cookie for reducing it. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#75. Bartholomew wore khaki trousers pulled up high on his belly, and spoke with an American accent filled with holes, mangling words until they were impossible to understand. Ifemelu sensed, from his demeanor, a deprived rural upbringing that he tried to compensate for with his American affectation, his gonnas and wannas. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#76. Yet such men do not need to imagine a male victim of crime as a brother or son in order to feel empathy. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#77. Philip May is known in politics as a man who has taken a back seat and allowed his wife, Theresa, to shine."

Allowed.

Now let us reverse it. Theresa May has allowed her husband to shine. Does it make sense? If Philip May were prime minister, perhaps we might hear that his wife had "supported" him from the background, or that she was "behind" him, or that she'd "stood by his side," but we would never hear that she had "allowed" him to shine.

"Allow" is a troubling word. "Allow" is about power. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#78. Because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye ... I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#79. This was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#80. I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#81. Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice. I am angry. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change. But I am also hopeful, because I believe deeply in the ability of human beings to remake themselves for the better. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#82. The Tanzanian told her that all fiction was therapy, some sort of therapy, no matter what anybody said. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#83. Try listening, maybe. Hear what is being said. And remember that it's not about you. American Blacks are not telling you that you are to blame. They are just telling you what is. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#84. When Philip complained about the French couple building a house next to his in Cornwall, Emenike asked, 'Are they between you and the sunset? #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#85. When we say fathers are "helping," we are suggesting that child care is a mother's territory, into which fathers valiantly venture. It is not. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#86. America's tribalisms - race, ideology, and region - became clear. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#87. They themselves mocked Africa, trading stories of absurdity, of stupidity, and they felt safe to mock, because it was a mockery born of longing, and of the heartbroken desire to see a place made whole again. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#88. We define masculinity in very narrow way. Masculinity is hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian-speak
a hard man, #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#89. There was a feeling I wanted to feel that I did not feel. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#90. There were emotions she wanted to hold in the palm of her hand that were simply no longer there. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#91. If you're telling a non-black person about something racist that happened to you, make sure you are not bitter. Don't complain. Be forgiving. If possible, make it funny. Most of all, do not be angry. Black people are not supposed to be angry about racism. Otherwise you get no sympathy. This applies only for white liberals, by the way. Don't even bother telling a white conservative about anything racist that happened to you. Because the conservative will tell you that YOU are the real racist and your mouth will hang open in confusion. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#92. She was not curvy or big-boned; she was fat, it was the only word that felt true. And she had ignored, too, the cement in her soul. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#93. I think my first general rule is that most of my experiences are not that interesting. It's usually other people's experiences. It's not that entirely conscious. Somebody tells me a story or, you know, repeats an anecdote that somebody else told them and I just feel like I have to write it down so I don't forget - that means for me, something made it fiction-worthy. Interesting things never happen to me, so maybe two or three times when they do, I have to use them, so I write them down. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#94. If I were not African, I wonder whether it would be clear to me that Africa is a place where the people do not need limp gifts of fish but sturdy fishing rods and fair access to the pond. I wonder whether I would realize that while African nations have a failure of leadership, they also have dynamic people with agency and voices. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#95. He believed in good omens and positive thoughts and happy endings to films, a trouble-free belief, because he had not considered them deeply before choosing to believe; he just simply believed. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#96. To be a child of the Third World is to be aware of the many different constituencies you have and how honesty and truth must always depend on context. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#97. They mimicked what Americans told them: You speak such good English. How bad is AIDS in your country? It's so sad that people live on less than a dollar a day in Africa. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#98. Each time he suggested they get married, she said no. They were too happy, precariously so, and she wanted to guard that bond; she feared that marriage would flatten it into a prosaic partnership. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#99. Mama had greeted him the traditional way that women were supposed to, bending low and offering him her back so that he would pat it with his fan made of the soft, straw-colored tail of an animal. Back home that night, Papa told Mama that it was sinful. You did not bow to another human being. It was an ungodly tradition, bowing to an Igwe. So, a few days later, when we went to see the bishop at Awka, I did not kneel to kiss his ring. I wanted to make Papa proud. But Papa yanked my ear in the car and said I did not have the spirit of discernment: the bishop was a man of God; the Igwe was merely a traditional ruler. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#100. And then we do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of males. We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls: You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, pretend that you are not, especially in public, otherwise you will emasculate him. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#101. In America, you don't get to decide what race you are. It is decided for you. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#102. He had discovered that grief did not dim with time; it was instead a volatile state of being. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#103. Love was a kind of grief. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#104. Then she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing him. Need gave him power without his trying; need was the choicelessness she often felt around him. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#105. We did that often, asking each other questions whose answers we already knew. Perhaps it was so that we would not ask the other questions, the ones whose answers we did not want to know. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#106. Aokpe will always be special because it was the reason Kambili and Jaja first came to Nsukka. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#107. I am interested in challenging the mainstream ideas of what is beautiful and what is acceptable. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#108. Papa sat down at the table and poured his tea from the china tea set with pink flowers on the edges. I waited for him to ask Jaja and me to take a sip, as he always did. A love sip, he called it, because you shared the little things you loved with the people you love. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#109. When it comes to dressing well, American culture is so self-fulfilled that it has not only disregarded this courtesy of self-presentation, but has turned that disregard into a virtue. We are too superior/busy/cool/not-uptight to bother about how we look to other people, and so we can wear pajamas to school and underwear to the mall. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#110. When we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#111. Each of my novels has come from a different place, and the processes are not always entirely conscious. I have lived off and on in America for a number of years and so have accumulated observations, found things interesting, been moved to tell stories about them. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#112. I'm chasing you. I'm going to chase you until you give this a chance. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#113. Teach her to question language. Language is the repository of our prejudices, our beliefs, our assumptions. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#114. What I find problematic is the suggestion that when, say, Madonna adopts an African child, she is saving Africa. It's not that simple. You have to do more than go there and adopt a child or show us pictures of children with flies in their eyes. That simplifies Africa. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#115. We spend too much time teaching girls to worry about what boys think of them. But the reverse is not the case. We don't teach boys to care about being likable. We spend too much time telling girls that they cannot be angry or aggressive or tough, which is bad enough, but then we turn around and either praise or excuse men for the same reasons. All over the world, there are so many magazine articles and books telling women what to do, how to be and not to be, in order to attract or please men. There are far fewer guides for men about pleasing women. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#116. My advice is that you wait. You can love without making love. It is a beautiful way of showing your feelings but it brings responsibility, great responsibility, and there is no rush. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#117. Gender is not an easy conversation to have. It makes people uncomfortable, sometimes even irritable. Both men and women are resistant to talk about gender, or are quick to dismiss the problems of gender. Because thinking of changing the status quo is always uncomfortable. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#118. I am trying to unlearn many lessons of gender I internalized while growing up. But I sometimes still feel vulnerable in the face of gender expectations. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#119. How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives we imagined. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#120. Some people will bring up evolutionary biology and apes, how female apes bow to male apes - that sort of thing. But the point is this: we are not apes. Apes also live in trees and eat earthworms. We do not. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#121. I look young. I heard this said so often that it became irritating. I once worked as a babysitter for a woman who, the first time we met, said she didn't want somebody in high school. I was 22. Later, I realised that in certain places being female and looking 'young' meant it was more difficult to be taken seriously, so I turned to make-up. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#122. And, by the way, you and the guy #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#123. It felt strange to call them directly, to hear her father's "Hello?" after the second ring, and when he heard her voice, he raised his, almost shouting, as he always did with international calls. Her mother liked to take the phone out to the verandah, to make sure the neighbors overheard: "Ifem, how is the weather in America? #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#124. The graying hair on the back of his head was swept forward, a comical arrangement to disguise his bald spot. He had to be an academic, but not in the humanities or he would be more self-conscious. A firm science like chemistry, maybe. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#125. It was a tiny moment, brief and fleeting, but Olanna noticed how scrupulously they avoided any contact, any touch of skin, as if they were united by a common knowledge so monumental that they were determined not to be united by anything else. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#126. Nigerian politics has been, since the military dictatorships, largely non-ideological. Rather than a battle of ideas, it is about who can pump in the most money and buy the most access. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#127. And felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself. With him, she was at ease; her skin felt as though it was her right size. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#128. They probably don't really like pale skin but they certainly like walking into a store without some security dude following them. Hating Your Goy and Eating One Too, as the great Philip Roth put it. So if everyone in America aspires to be WASPs, then what do WASPs aspire to? Does anyone know? #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#129. Now." After Ifemelu hung up, still amused, she decided to change the title of her blog to Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black. Job Vacancy in America - National Arbiter in Chief of "Who Is Racist" In America, racism exists but racists are all gone. Racists belong to the past. Racists are the thin-lipped mean white people in the movies about the civil rights era. Here's the thing: the manifestation of racism has changed but the language has not. So if you haven't #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#130. Ifemelu stood by the window while Aunty Uju sat at the table drinking orange juice and airing her grievances like jewels. It had become a routine of Ifemelu's visits: Aunty Uju collected all her dissatisfactions in a silk purse, nursing them, polishing them, and then on the Saturday of Ifemelu's visit, while Bartholomew was out and Dike upstairs, she would spill them out on the table, and turn each one this way and that, to catch the light. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#131. I prefer Ms. because it is similar to Mr. A man is Mr. whether married or not, a woman is Ms. whether married or not. So please teach Chizalum that in a truly just society, women should not be expected to make marriage-based changes that men are not expected to make. Here's a nifty solution: Each couple that marries should take on an entirely new surname, chosen however they want as long as both agree to it, so that a day after the wedding, both husband and wife can hold hands and joyfully journey off to the municipal offices to change their passports, driver's licenses, signatures, initials, bank accounts, etc. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#132. He was no longer sure, he had in fact never been sure, whether he liked his life because he really did or whether he liked it because he was supposed to. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#133. My life had become a helluva plot that could give Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie another New York Times bestseller. #Quote by S.A. David

#134. We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don't teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#135. His optimism blinded her. He was full of plans. "I have an idea!" he said often. She imagined him as a child surrounded by too many brightly colored toys, always being encouraged to carry out "projects", always being told that his mundane ideas were wonderful. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#136. He often paused before he spoke. She thought this exquisite; it was as though he had such regard for his listener that he wanted his words strung together in the best possible way. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#137. They are always so quiet," he said, turning to Papa. "So quiet."
"They are not like those loud children people are raising these days, with no home training and no fear of God," Papa said, and I was certain that it was pride that stretched Papa's lips and lightened his eyes.
"Imagine what the Standard would be if we were all quiet." It was a joke. Ade Coker was laughing; so was his wife, Yewanda. But Papa did not laugh. Jaja and I turned and went back upstairs, silently. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#138. He missed her, a longing that tore deep into him. He resented her He wondered endlessly what might have happened. He changed, curled more inwardly into himself. He was, by turns, inflamed by anger, twisted by confusion, withered by sadness. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#139. You see, in American pop culture, beautiful dark women are invisible. (The other group just as invisible is Asian men. But at least they get to be super smart.) In movies, dark black women get to be the fat nice mommy or the strong, sassy, sometimes scary sidekick standing by supportively. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#140. He turned to her and said, "About time," when the train finally creaked in, with the familiarity strangers adopt with each other after sharing in the disappointment of a public service. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#141. If we keep seeing only men as heads of corporations, it starts to seem "natural" that only men should be heads of corporations. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#142. They do not doubt their presence here, these students. They believe they should be here, they have earned it and thay are paying for it. Au fond, they have bought us all. It is the key to America's greatness, this hubris, #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#143. Be a full person. Motherhood is a glorious gift, but do not define yourself solely by motherhood. Be a full person. Your child will benefit from that. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#144. Non-fiction, and in particular the literary memoir, the stylised recollection of personal experience, is often as much about character and story and emotion as fiction is. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#145. They will always be doomed to supermarkets like this. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#146. Those girls, I was waiting for the to bring out their hands and beg you to shit so they could worship that too. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#147. A father is as much a verb as a mother. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#148. People were saying, Oh, why did he slap her when she's a widow, and that annoyed her even more. She said she should not have been slapped because she is a full human being, not because she doesn't have a husband to speak for her. So some of her female students went and printed Full Human Being on T-shirts. I guess it made her well-known. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#149. Blaine needed what she was unable to give and she needed what he was unable to give, and she grieved this, the loss of what could have been. So #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#150. These are little things but sometimes it's the little things that sting the most. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#151. They fascinated him, the unsubtle cowering of the almost rich in the presence of the rich, and the rich in the presence of the very rich; to have money, it seemed, was to be consumed by money. Obinze felt repulsion and longing; he pitied them, but he also imagined being like them. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#152. We condition girls to aspire to marriage and we do not condition boys to aspire to marriage, and so there is already a terrible imbalance at the start. The girls will grow up to be women preoccupied with marriage. The boys will grow up to be men who are not preoccupied with marriage. The women marry those men. The relationship is automatically uneven because the institution matters more to one than the other. Is it any wonder that, in so many marriages, women sacrifice more, at a loss to themselves, because they have to constantly maintain an uneven exchange? One consequence of this imbalance is the very shabby and very familiar phenomenon of two women publicly fighting over a man, while the man remains silent #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#153. Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#154. Americans will smile at you and be extremely friendly but if your name is not Cory or Chad, they make no effort at saying it properly. The Brits will be surly and will be suspicious if you're too friendly but they will treat foreign names as though they are actually valid names." "That's interesting, #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#155. ...parents unconsciously start very early to teach girls how to be, that baby girls are given less room and more rules and baby boys more room and fewer rules. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#156. It doesn't have to be dreads. You can wear an Afro, or braids like you used to. There's a lot you can do with natural hair #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#157. Whenever she felt besieged by doubts, she would think of herself as standing valiantly alone, as almost heroic, so as to squash her uncertainty. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#158. Ifemelu was looking forward to being away from home, to the independence of owning her own time. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#159. You wanted to feel disdain, to show it as you brought his order, because white people who liked Africa too much and those who liked Africa too little were the same - condescending. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#160. We have evolved. But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much. Not #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#161. Richard exhaled. It was like somebody sprinkling pepper on his wound: Thousands of Biafrans were dead, and this man wanted to know if there was anything new about one dead white man. Richard would write about this, the rule of Western journalism: One hundred dead black people equal to one dead white person. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#162. Like how the government of General Abacha was using its foreign policy to legitimize itself in the eyes of other African countries. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#163. There are people who think that we cannot rule ourselves because the few times we tried, we failed, as if all the others who rule themselves today got it right the first time. It is like telling a crawling baby who tries to walk, and then falls back on his buttocks, to stay there. As if the adults walking past him did not crawl, once #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#164. When Sister Ibinabo was talking to Christie, with that poisonous spite she claimed was religious guidance, Ifemelu had looked at her and suddenly seen something of her own mother. Her mother was a kinder and simpler person, but like Sister Ibinabo, she was a person who denied that things were as they were. A person who had to spread the cloak of religion over her own petty desires. Suddenly, the last thing Ifemelu wanted was to be in that small room full of shadows. It had all seemed benign before, her mother's faith, all drenched in grace, and suddenly it no longer was. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#165. but racism is about the power of a group and in America it's white folks who have that power. How? Well, white folks don't get treated like shit in upper-class African-American communities and white folks don't get denied bank loans or mortgages precisely because they are white and black juries don't give white criminals worse sentences than black criminals for the same crime and black police officers don't stop white folk for driving while white and black companies don't choose not to hire somebody because their name sounds white and black teachers don't tell white kids that they're not smart enough to be doctors and black politicians don't try some tricks to reduce the voting power of white folks through gerrymandering and advertising agencies don't say they can't use white models to advertise glamorous products because they are not considered "aspirational" by the "mainstream." So #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#166. There was a stripped-down quality to her life, a kindling starkness, without parents and friends and home, the familiar landmarks that made her who she was. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#167. I own things I like, but nothing inanimate that I treasure in a deeply consuming way. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#168. You Americans, always peering under people's beds to look for communism. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#169. She wanted to ask him why they were all strangers who shared the same last name. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#170. He thought about the next time he would laugh with her and then the next. He found himself often thinking about the future, even before the present was over. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#171. The only reason you say that race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all wish it was not. But it's a lie. I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America. When you are black and fall in love with a white person, race doesn't matter when you're alone together because it's just you and your love. But the minute you step outside, race matters. But we don't talk about it. We don't even tell our white partners the small things that piss us off and the things we wish they understood better, because we're worried they will say we're overreacting, or we're being too sensitive. And we don't want them to say, Look how far we've come, just forty years ago it would have been illegal for us to even be a couple blah blah blah, because you know what we're thinking when they say that? We're thinking why the fuck should it ever have been illegal anyway? But we don't say any of this stuff. We let it pile up inside our heads and when we come to nice liberal dinners like this, we say that race doesn't matter because that's what we're supposed to say, to keep our nice liberal friends comfortable. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#172. Lagos has never been, will never be, and has never aspired to be like New York, or anywhere else for that matter. Lagos has always been undisputably itself, but you would never know this at the meeting of the Nigerpolitan Club, a group of returnees who gather every week to moan about the many ways Lagos is not like New York as though Lagos had never ever been close to being like New York. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#173. The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#174. Of course I am angry. I am angry about racism. I am angry about sexism. But I recently came to the realization that I am angrier about sexism than I am about racism. Because in my anger about sexism, I often feel lonely. Because I love, and live among, many people who easily acknowledge race injustice but not gender injustice. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#175. Everybody is hungry in this country, even the rich men are hungry, but nobody is honest. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#176. Let her know that there are many individuals and many cultures that do not find the narrow mainstream definition of beauty attractive. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#177. The problem with stereotypes is not because they are untrue, its because they are incomplete; they make one story, the only story #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#178. ...a Nigerian couple visiting from Maryland, their two boys sitting next to them on the sofa, both buttoned-up and stiff, caged in the airlessness of their parents' immigrant aspirations. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#179. The urge to be contrarian was strong. If she set herself apart, perhaps she would be less of the person she feared she had become. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#180. There must be more than male benevolence as the basis for a woman's well-being. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#181. It is our diffidence about the afterlife that leads us to religion #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#182. He was not living his life; life was living him #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#183. That a woman claims not to be feminist does not diminish the necessity of feminism. If anything, it makes us see the extent of the problem, the successful reach of patriarchy. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#184. She liked, most of all, that in this place of affluent ease, she could pretend to be someone else, someone specially admitted into a hallowed American club, someone adorned with certainty. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#185. Ifemelu would come to realize later that Kimberly used "beautiful" in a peculiar way. "I'm meeting my beautiful friend from graduate school," Kimberly would say, or "We're working with this beautiful woman on the inner-city project," and always, the women she referred to would turn out to be quite ordinary-looking, but always black. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#186. Oh, why did he slap her when she's a widow, and that annoyed her even more. She said she should not have been slapped because she is a full human being, not because she doesn't have a husband to speak for her. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#187. She did not understand grunge, the idea of looking shabby because you could afford not to be shabby; it mocked true shabbiness. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#188. She had not thought of them as "fat," though. She had thought of them as "big," because one of the first things her friend Ginika told her was that "fat" in America was a bad word, heaving with moral judgment like "stupid" or "bastard," and not a mere description like "short" or "tall. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#189. Why did people ask "What is it about?" as if a novel had to be about only one thing. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#190. For centuries, the world divided human beings into two groups and then proceeded to exclude and oppress one group. It is only fair that the solution to the problem acknowledge that. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#191. Love is the most important. The most necessary human emotion. Not just romantic love. Love. The ability of human beings to connect. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#192. I'm Vincent," Obinze said, when they met in the back room. "I'm Dee." A pause. "No, you're not English. You can pronounce it. My real name is Duerdinhito, but the English, they cannot pronounce, so they call me Dee." "Duerdinhito," Obinze repeated. "Yes!" A delighted smile. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#193. Some men feel threatened by the idea of feminism. This comes I think from the insecurity triggered by how boys are brought up, how their sense of self worth is diminished if they are not [naturally] in charge. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#194. Don't think that raising her feminist means forcing her to reject femininity. Feminism and femininity are not exclusive. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#195. If the justification for controlling women's bodies were about women themselves, then it would be understandable. If, for example, the reason was 'women should not wear short skirts because they can get cancer if they do.' Instead the reason is not about women, but about men. Women must be 'covered up' to protect men. I find this deeply dehumanizing because it reduces women to mere props used to manage the appetites of men. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#196. Yes, there's a problem with gender as it is today, and we must fix it, we must do better. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#197. Ojiugo wore orange lipstick and ripped jeans, spoke bluntly, and smoked in public, provoking vicious gossip and dislike from other girls, not because she did these things but because she dared to without having lived abroad, or having a foreign parent, those qualities that would have made them forgive her lack of conformity. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#198. We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#199. Tell Chizalum that women actually don't need to be championed and revered; they just need to be treated as equal human beings. #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#200. Circles, homework coupons, what foolishness would she next hear? And so she began to teach him mathematics - she called it "maths" and he called it "math #Quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie