Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• 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

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Baby, Fall, Past

  80 Copy quote

• We do not just risk repeating history if we sweep it under the carpet, we also risk being myopic about our present.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Risk, Myopic, Carpet

  "In the Footsteps of Achebe: Enter Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie". Interview with Ike Anya, www.africanwriter.com. October 15, 2005.

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• 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.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Book, Men, Order

  "We Should All Be Feminists". Book by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, July 29, 2014.

  47 Copy quote

• I am interested in challenging the mainstream ideas of what is beautiful and what is acceptable.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Beautiful, Ideas, Challenges

  Interview with Kima Jones, therumpus.net. June 17, 2014.

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• The novels I love, the ones I remember, the ones I re-read, have an empathetic human quality, or 'emotional truth'. This quality is difficult to fully define, but I always recognise it when I see it: it is different from honesty and more resilient than fact, something that exists not in the kind of fiction that explains but in the kind that shows.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Honesty, Emotional, Quality

  53 Copy quote

• You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me?' Aunty Ifeka said. 'Your life belongs to you and you alone.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Men, Said, Yellow Sun

  FaceBook post by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from Aug 18, 2011

  66 Copy quote

• Lasting love has to be built on mutual regard and respect. It is about seeing the other person. I am very interested in relationships and, when I watch couples, sometimes I can sense a blindness has set in. They have stopped seeing each other. It is not easy to see another person.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Couple, Watches, Sometimes

  "Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: 'My new novel is about love, race... and hair'" by Kate Kellaway, www.theguardian.com. April 6, 2013.

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• Some people ask: "Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?" Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general-but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Women, Rights, Expression

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2014). “We Should All Be Feminists”, p.41, Vintage

  46 Copy quote

• She could not complain about not having shoes when the person she was talking to had no legs.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Talking, Shoes, Complaining

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2009). “The Thing Around Your Neck”, p.86, Anchor

  26 Copy quote

• The real tragedy of our postcolonial world is not that the majority of people had no say in whether or not they wanted this new world; rather, it is that the majority have not been given the tools to negotiate this new world.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Real, People, Tragedy

  FaceBook post by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from Jun 30, 2010

  35 Copy quote

• The educated ones leave, the ones with the potential to right the wrongs. They leave the weak behind. The tyrants continue to reign because the weak cannot resist. Do you not see that it is a cycle? Who will break that cycle?

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Tyrants, Reign, Weak

  FaceBook post by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from Aug 28, 2014

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

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  World, Way, Different

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

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Home, Thinking, Back Home

  "I Left Home to Find Home". Interview with Carl Wilkinson, www.theguardian.com. March 06, 2005.

  29 Copy quote

• Racism should never have happened and so you don't get a cookie for reducing it.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Racism, Cookies, Reducing

  FaceBook post by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from Jun 05, 2016

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• Why must we always talk about race anyway? Can't we just be human beings? And Professor Hunk replied - that is exactly what white privilege is, that you can say that. Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Race, White Privilege, Choices

  19 Copy quote

• Stories matter. Many stories matter.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Stories, Matter

  "The danger of a single story". TED Talks, www.ted.com. July 2009.

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

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Stories, Ability, Persons

  "The danger of a single story". TED Talk, www.ted.com. July, 2009.

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• You can't write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Inspiring, Writing, Mind

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2008). “Half of a Yellow Sun”, p.210, Anchor

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• People have crushes on priests all the time, you know. It’s exciting to have to deal with God as a rival.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Crush, People, Rivals

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2012). “Purple Hibiscus: A Novel”, p.220, Algonquin Books

  6 Copy quote

• The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be, rather than recognising how we are.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Problem, Gender, Should

  "We Should All Be Feminists". Book by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, July 29, 2014.

  27 Copy quote

• This was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Love, Romantic, Miracle

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2008). “Half of a Yellow Sun”, p.135, Anchor

  40 Copy quote

• 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.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  America, Choices, Black

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013). “Americanah”, p.242, Anchor

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• I recently spoke at a university where a student told me it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had recently read a novel called American Psycho,and that it was a shame that young Americans were serial murderers.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Father, Character, Men

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• 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.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Girl, Hair, Color

  29 Copy quote

• 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.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Believe, Asking Questions, Sake

  "Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Continental Divides". Interview with Joseph Klarl, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 14, 2013.

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