Skip to content

Lesley Nneka Arimah Quotes

born 1983 Nigeria

Lesley Nneka Arimah (born 13 October 1983 in London, United Kingdom) is a Nigerian writer. She has been described as "a skillful storyteller who can render entire relationships with just a few lines of dialogue" and "a new voice with certain staying power." She is the winner of the 2015 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Africa, the 2017 O.

Nigeria
Authors

Random Lesley Nneka Arimah quote

7 quotes

A world where women must remain naked until they are married; there are complications.

There needs to be something that matters to you, even if you’re inventing this impossible world filled with raffia babies.

There is nothing inherently wrong with not knowing as much as people think you should or not knowing everything. There is no need to feel any sort of shame.

So it’s not motivation to continue, but reward for work already completed. That’s the most important thing to keep in mind, that the work comes first.

When I think of what literature can do, and I think of the ways that literature has changed minds and opened imaginations, I want to say that we African writers must centre the African gaze.

A reader comes to the page and essentially learns the rules of this world, not because the rules are being told to them but because the rules are being broken. Via the consequences of the rules being broken, the reader comes to understand what the rules are.

So why not be as deliberate in creating myth as those who came before us, so that those who come after us can better understand our concerns and our cultural obsessions

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Lesley Nneka Arimah (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.