Sometimes novels are considered 'important' in the way medicine is - they taste terrible and are difficult to get down your throat,… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“It’s a novel, right? What’s it about?” Why did people ask “What is it about?” as if a novel had to be… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
To return to the books of my childhood is to yield to the strain of nostalgia that is curious about the self… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
Why did people ask "What is it about?" as if a novel had to be about only one thing. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“He wanted to know about day-to-day life in America, what people ate and what consumed them, what shamed them and what attracted… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
All over the world, there are so many magazine articles and books telling women what to do, how to be and not… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
The best novels are those that are important without being like medicine; they have something to say, are expansive and intelligent but… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
I am drawn, as a reader, to detail-drenched stories about human lives affected as much by the internal as by the external,… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“Grace would ponder this story for a long time, with great sadness, and it would cause her to make a clear link… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
'No Sweetness Here' is the kind of old-fashioned social realism I have always been drawn to in fiction, and it does what… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
Because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye … I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“You can’t even read American fiction to get a sense of how actual life is lived these days. You read American fiction… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“he was sure that she, with a little more time and a little more wisdom, would come to accept that the novels… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
The novels I love, the ones I remember, the ones I re-read, have an empathetic human quality, or 'emotional truth'. This quality… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“Ifemelu opened her novel, Jean Toomer's Cane, and skimmed a few pages. She had been meaning to read it for a while… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
I think it's important to humanize history; fiction can help us remember. A lot of books I've read in the past have… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
I had people read it early on and, you know, well-meaning people said to me, you should take out the blogs. I… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“Readers like SapphicDerrida, who reeled off statistics and used words like “reify” in their comments, made Ifemelu nervous, eager to be fresh… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“Are you kidding me?' Shan asked, slightly drunk, slightly dramatic, and now sitting yoga style on the floor. 'You can't write an… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
Each of my novels has come from a different place, and the processes are not always entirely conscious. I have lived off… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
Americans think African writers will write about the exotic, about wildlife, poverty, maybe AIDS. They come to Africa and African books with… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“What I’ve noticed being here is that many English people are in awe of America but also deeply resent it,” Obinze added. “Perfectly true,”… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
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… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“Because human beings lived then in a world in which physical strength was the most important attribute for survival; the physically stronger person was… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
To return to the books of my childhood is to yield to the strain of nostalgia that is curious about the self I once… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
I think white women need to wake up and say, 'Not all women are white,' three times in front of the mirror. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are. If we have sons, we don't mind knowing about… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“Alexa, and the other guests, and perhaps even Georgina, all understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls,… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“It was not as if he did not know what living in Lagos could do to a woman married to a young and wealthy… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“They have the kinds of things we can eat.' An unease crept up on Ifemelu. She was comfortable here, and she wished she were… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
If I were not African, I wonder whether it would be clear to me that Africa is a place where the people do not… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“But race is not biology; race is sociology. Race is not genotype; race is phenotype. Race matters because of racism. And racism is absurd… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
