“Life was a struggle with ourselves more than with a spear-wielding Satan; that belief was a choice for our conscience always to… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“He had first been excited by Facebook, ghosts of old friends suddenly morphing to life with wives and husbands and children, and… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
Creative writing programmes are not very necessary. They just exist so that people like us can make a living. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“She was after all the kind of woman who would make a man easily uproot his life, the kind who, because she… — 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
“He was no longer sure, he had in fact never been sure, whether he liked his life because he really did or… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“What if the parents, from the beginning, taught both children to cook Indomie? Cooking, by the way, is a useful and practical… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“There was something wrong with her. She did not know what it was but there was something wrong with her. A hunger,… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“One day, I will look up and all the people I know will be dead or abroad.” — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“Lagos is a metropolis of almost twenty million people, with more energy than London, more entrepreneurial spirit than New York, and so… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
Because I am female, I’m expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“I think love is the most important thing in life. Whatever kind, however you define it, but I think of it generally… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
“I often wear clothes that men don’t like or don’t “understand.” I wear them because I like them and because I feel… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me?' Aunty Ifeka said. 'Your life belongs… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
I have many problems in my life, but I don't think that identity is one of them. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Nobody just leaves medical school, especially given it's fiercely competitive to get in. But I had a sister who was a doctor,… — 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