Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie quotes - page 4

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. (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)
The best novels are those that are important without being like medicine; they have something to say, are expansive and intelligent but never forget to be entertaining and to have character and emotion at their centre.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Perhaps it is time to debate culture. The common story is that in "real" African culture, before it was tainted by the west, gender roles were rigid and women were contentedly oppressed.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I would come, many years later, to understand why To Kill A Mockingbird is considered an important novel, but when I first read it at 11, I was simply absorbed by the way it evoked the mysteries of childhood, of treasures discovered in trees, and games played with an exotic summer friend.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I like the U.S. and feel gratitude towards it.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I have my father's lopsided mouth. When I smile, my lips slope to one side. My doctor sister calls it my cerebral palsy mouth. I am very much a daddy's girl, and even though I would rather my smile wasn't crooked, there is something moving for me about having a mouth exactly like my father's.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Americans think African writers will write about the exotic, about wildlife, poverty, maybe AIDS. They come to Africa and African books with certain expectations.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I live half the year in Nigeria, the other half in the U.S. But home is Nigeria - it always will be. I consider myself a Nigerian who is comfortable in the world. I look at it through Nigerian eyes.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
There has always been a strange dissonance between the public and the private in Nigeria.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I divide my time between Columbia, Maryland, and Lagos, Nigeria. (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)
If you followed the media you'd think that everybody in Africa was starving to death, and that's not the case; so it's important to engage with the other Africa.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I am drawn, as a reader, to detail-drenched stories about human lives affected as much by the internal as by the external, the kind of fiction that Jane Smiley nicely describes as 'first and foremost about how individuals fit, or don't fit, into their social worlds.'
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I am angry. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Your feminist premise should be: I matter. I matter equally. Not "if only.” Not "as long as.” I matter equally. Full stop.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The late Kenyan Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathai put it simply and well when she said, the higher you go, the fewer women there are.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Maybe it's time to just scrap the word "racist.” Find something new. Like Racial Disorder Syndrome. And we could have different categories for sufferers of this syndrome: mild, medium, and acute.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
She had always liked this image of herself as too much trouble, as different, and she sometimes thought of it as a carapace that kept her safe. (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)
" 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.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A world of happier men and happier women who are truer to themselves. And this is how to start: We must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
If we do something over and over, it becomes normal. If we see the same thing over and over, it becomes normal.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
But by far the worst thing we do to males-by making them feel they have to be hard-is that we leave them with very fragile egos. The harder a man feels compelled to be, the weaker his ego is.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie