Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes

Other men might respond by saying: Okay, this is interesting, but I don’t think like that. I don’t e...

I should never call myself a feminist since feminists are women who are unhappy because they cannot ...

The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent,...

I learned a lot about systems of oppression and how they can be blind to one another by talking to b...

At some point I was a Happy African Feminist Who Does Not Hate Men and Who Likes to Wear Lip Gloss a...

Marriage can be a good thing, a source of joy, love, and mutual support. But why do we teach girls t...

I am just as human as the man.

Non-fiction, and in particular the literary memoir, the stylised recollection of personal experience...

it would hurt him to know she had felt that way for a while, that her relationship with him was like...

If you followed the media you'd think that everybody in Africa was starving to death, and that's not...

Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive sto...

He thought about the next time he would laugh with her and then the next. He found himself often thi...

If I were not African, I wonder whether it would be clear to me that Africa is a place where the peo...

There's something very lazy about the way you have loved him blindly for so long without ever critic...

I was telling them about back home and how all the boys were chasing me because I was half-caste, an...

They probably don't really like pale skin but they certainly like walking into a store without some ...

In that strained, still second when her eyes met Christina Tomas's before she took the forms, she sh...

She had come to understand that American parenting was a juggling of anxieties, and that it came wit...

The longer she spent in America, the better she had become at distinguishing, sometimes from looks a...

If I had not grown up in Nigeria- and if all I knew of Africa were of popular images- I too would th...

The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we ´should' be rather than recognizing how we are.

The language of marriage is often a language of ownership, not a language of partnership.

Today, we live in a vastly different world. The person more qualified to lead is not the physically ...

Gender is not an easy conversation to have. It makes people uncomfortable, sometimes even irritable....

​If we do something over and over again, it becomes normal. If we see the same thing over and over a...

Some people will bring up evolutionary biology and apes, how female apes bow to male apes - that sor...

Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn't ...

Lasting love has to be built on mutual regard and respect. It is about seeing the other person. I am...

Now imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we did...

We're all social beings. We internalize ideas from our socialization.

I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there.

Some people will say, “Oh, but women have the real power, bottom power.” And for non-Nigerians, “bot...

The best thing about America is that it gives you space. I like that. I like that you buy into the d...

I have my father's lopsided mouth. When I smile, my lips slope to one side. My doctor sister calls i...

We do not just risk repeating history if we sweep it under the carpet, we also risk being myopic abo...

I ask questions. I watch the world. And what I have discovered is that the parts of my fiction that ...

She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a ...

Foreign behavior? What the fuck are you talking about? Foreign behavior? Have you read Things Fall A...

Soon," he said in his letter. They said "soon" to each other often, and "soon" gave their plan the w...

...I'm worried I will leave grad school and no longer be able to speak English. I know this woman in...

On the day Princess Diana died, a group of students had gathered before a lecture, talking about wha...

His optimism blinded her. He was full of plans. "I have an idea!" he said often. She imagined him as...

smiling a smile full of things restrained

Try more strategy and less force. Passion never wins any game, never mind what they say.” He said so...

I don't want to be a sweetheart. I want to be the fucking love of your life," Curt said with a force...

Alexa, and the other guests, and perhaps even Georgina, all understood the fleeing from war, from th...

Ma? I think you have the spirit of husband-repelling. You are too hard, ma, you will not find a husb...

She did not tell him this, because it would hurt him to know she had felt that way for a while, that...

A book did not qualify as literature unless it had polysyllabic words and incomprehensible passages.

Oh, why did he slap her when she’s a widow, and that annoyed her even more. She said she should not ...

It puzzled him that she did not mourn all the things she could have been. Was it a quality inherent ...

She recognized in Kelsey the nationalism of liberal Americans who copiously criticized America but d...

...she thought of him as a person who did not have a normal spine, but had instead, a firm reed of g...

My Fellow Non-American Blacks: In America, You Are Black, Baby Dear Non-American Black, when you mak...

femelu could not understand this, her mother’s ability to tell herself stories about her reality tha...

They never said “I don’t know.” They said, instead, “I’m not sure,” which did not give any informati...

In America, racism exists but racists are all gone.

People often told him how humble he was, but they did not mean real humility, it was merely that he ...

In America, racism exists but racists are all gone. Racists belong to the past. Racists are the thin...

It doesn't have to be dreads. You can wear an Afro, or braids like you used to. There's a lot you ca...

The point of diversity workshops, or multicultural talks, was not to inspire any real change but to ...

White writers can be blunt about race and get all activist because their anger isn’t threatening

he lived in London indeed but invisibly, his existence like an erased pencil sketch

Is Obama Anything but Black?So lots of folk—mostly non-black—say Obama’s not black, he’s biracial, m...

Maybe it’s time to just scrap the word “racist.” Find something new. Like Racial Disorder Syndrome. ...

You can't write an honest novel about race in this country. If you write about how people are really...

Relaxing your hair is like being in prison. You're caged in. Your hair rules you. You didn't go runn...

They tell us race is an invention, that there is no genetic variation between two black people than ...

Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that c...

Ifemelu would also come to learn that, for Kimberly, the poor were blameless. Poverty was a gleaming...

Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing...

Sometimes she worried that she was too happy. . . And her joy would become a restless thing, flappin...

There are many different ways to be poor in the world but increasingly there seems to be one single ...

Alexa and the other guests, and perhaps even Georgina, all understood the fleeing from war, from the...

As they walked out of the store, Ifemelu said, “I was waiting for her to ask ‘Was it the one with tw...

You could have just said Ngozi is your tribal name and Ifemelu is your jungle name and throw in one ...

One day, I will look up and all the people I know will be dead or abroad.

Ifemelu thought about the expression "sweet girl." Sweet girl meant that, for a long time, Don had m...

When you want to join a prestigious social club, do you wonder if your race will make it difficult t...

It felt strange to call them directly, to hear her father’s “Hello?” after the second ring, and when...

Because when there is true equality, resentment does not exist.

That a woman claims not to be feminist does not diminish the necessity of feminism. If anything, it ...

Teach her to question men who can have empathy for women only if they see them as relational rather ...

Talk to her about sex, and start early. It will probably be a bit awkward, but it is necessary.

A father is as much a verb as a mother.

Be a full person. Motherhood is a glorious gift, but do not define yourself solely by motherhood. Be...

If the justification for controlling women's bodies were about women themselves, then it would be un...

Make dressing a question of taste and attractiveness instead of a question of morality.

Teach her about difference. Make difference ordinary. Make difference normal. Teach her not to attac...

Teach her that the idea of 'gender roles' is absolute nonsense. Do not ever tell her that she should...

We have a world full of women who are unable to exhale fully because they have for so long been cond...

Feminism and femininity are not mutually exclusive. It is misogynistic to suggest that they are. Sad...

If we don't place the straitjacket of gender roles on young children, we give them space to reach th...

...above all, let your focus be on remaining a full person. Take time for yourself. Nurture your own...

There must be more than male benevolence as the basis for a woman's well-being.

If the sun refuses to rise we will make it rise

Greatness depends on where you are coming from.

Is love this misguided need to have you beside me most of the time? Is love this safety I feel in ou...

Each time he suggested they get married, she said no. They were too happy, precariously so, and she ...

But by far the worst thing we do to males — by making them feel they have to be hard — is that we le...

Gender matters everywhere in the world. And I would like today to ask what we begin to dream about a...