Fiction Quotes by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

11 Fiction quotes by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

All Fiction quotes Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s page

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writes with a keen eye on identity, and her reflections on fiction highlight its power to challenge stereotypes. These eleven short statements capture her belief that stories can reshape how we see each other.

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Successful fiction does not need to be validated by 'real life'; I cringe whenever a writer is asked how much of a…

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Non-fiction, and in particular the literary memoir, the stylised recollection of personal experience, is often as much about character and story and…

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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I can write with authority only about what I know well, which means that I end up using surface details of my…

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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“The Tanzanian told her that all fiction was therapy, some sort of therapy, no matter what anybody said.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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I think human beings exist in a social world. I write realistic fiction, and so it isn't that surprising that the social…

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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'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

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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

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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

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“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

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I ask questions. I watch the world. And what I have discovered is that the parts of my fiction that people most…

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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I think my first general rule is that most of my experiences are not that interesting. It's usually other people's experiences. It's…

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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“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

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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

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“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

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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

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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

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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

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“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

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“I discovered race in America and it fascinated me.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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“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

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“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

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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

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“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

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I like the U.S. and feel gratitude towards it.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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I’m very feminist in the way I look at the world, and that worldview must somehow be part of my work.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Perhaps it is time to debate culture. The common story is that in 'real' African culture, before it was tainted by the West, gender…

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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