163 quotes
Some kindnesses you do not ever forget. You carry them to your grave, held warmly somewhere, brought up and savored from time to time.
Zikora (2020)
She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself.
Americanah (2013)
I'm trying to unlearn many of the lessons of gender that I internalized when I was growing up. But I sometimes still feel very vulnerable in the face of gender expectations.
You hate men, you hate bras, you hate African culture, you think women should always be in charge, you don’t wear makeup, you don’t shave, you’re always angry, you don’t have a sense of humor, you don’t use deodorant.
We Should All Be Feminists (2014)
Bottom power means that a woman simply has a good root to tap into, from time to time, somebody else's power. And then of course we have to wonder what happens when that somebody else is in a bad mood, or sick, or impotent.
In my head, there was a queue of emotions I could not name, wanting to be tried out one after the other.
Zikora (2020)
I felt translucent, so fragile that one more rejection would make me come fully undone.
Zikora (2020)
It does not matter whether I want to be changed, because I am changed.
Notes on Grief (2021)
"This is our world, although the people who drew this map decided to put their own land on top of ours. There is no top or bottom, you see."
Half of a yellow sun (2006)
No matter who we are, we dream.
"Is love this misguided need to have you beside me most of the time? Is love this safety I feel in our silences? Is it this belonging, this completeness?"
Half of a yellow sun (2006)
“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.”
Notes on Grief (2021)
“If you don’t understand, ask questions. If you’re uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway. It’s easy to tell when a question is coming from a good place. Then listen some more.”
Notes on Grief (2021)
Only later did I see how, to survive, she wielded her niceness like a subtle sharp knife.
Zikora (2020)
We mostly spoke English; Igbo was for mimicking relatives and for saying painful things.
Zikora (2020)
Ours was an ancient story, the woman wants the baby and the man doesn’t want the baby and a middle ground does not exist.
Zikora (2020)
Some people will bring up evolutionary biology and apes, how, you know, female apes bow down to male apes and that sort of thing
Nature demanded so much of the woman and so little of the man
Zikora (2020)
"How can we resist exploitation if we don’t have the tools to understand exploitation. Which of your favourite quotes by Chimamanda did we miss?"
I felt light from relief, weightless, unburdened.
Zikora (2020)