Chi­ma­man­da Ngo­zi Adi­chie: Trending quotes (page 3)

“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.”

“I often make the mistake of thinking that something that is obvious to me is just as obvious to everyone else.”

“If we do something over and over, it becomes normal. If we see the same thing over and over, it becomes normal.”

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

“And it's wrong of you to think that love leaves room for nothing else. It's possible to love something and still condescend to it.”

“Teach her that the idea of 'gender roles' is absolute nonsense. Do not ever tell her that she should or should not do something because she is a girl.
'Because you are a girl' is never reason for anything.
Ever.”

“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.”

“Being defiant can be a good thing sometimes," Aunty Ifeoma said. "Defiance is like marijuana - it is not a bad thing when it is used right.”

“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.”

“You Americans, always peering under people's beds to look for communism.”

“The truth has become an insult.”

“Teach her that if you criticize X in women but do not criticize X in men, then you do not have a problem with X, you have a problem with women.”

“I'm chasing you. I'm going to chase you until you give this a chance.”

“Academics were not intellectuals; they were not curious, they built their stolid tents of specialized knowledge and stayed securely in them.”

“They never said “I don’t know.” They said, instead, “I’m not sure,” which did not give any information but still suggested the possibility of knowledge.”

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

“They themselves mocked Africa, trading stories of absurdity, of stupidity, and they felt safe to mock, because it was a mockery born of longing, and of the heartbroken desire to see a place made whole again.”

“Death would be a complete knowingness, but what frightened him was this: not knowing beforehand what it was he would know.”

“To have money, it seemed, was to be consumed by money.”