749 Quotes by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

It’s strange how I have felt, with every major event that has occurred in my life, that you were the only person who would understand.

I like politics and history and am happiest when having a good argument about ideas.

Ifemelu stood by the window while Aunty Uju sat at the table drinking orange juice and airing her grievances like jewels. It had become a routine of Ifemelu’s visits: Aunty Uju collected all her dissatisfactions in a silk purse, nursing them, polishing them, and then on the Saturday of Ifemelu’s visit, while Bartholomew was out and Dike upstairs, she would spill them out on the table, and turn each one this way and that, to catch the light.

I am angry. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change.

She was after all the kind of woman who would make a man easily uproot his life, the kind who, because she did not expect or ask for certainty, made a certain kind of sureness become possible.

Because you are a girl” is never a reason for anything. Ever.

It puzzled him that she did not mourn all the things she could have been. Was it a quality inherent in women, or did they just learn to shield their personal regrets, to suspend their lives, subsume themselves in child care?

So teach Chizalum that biology is an interesting and fascinating subject, but she should never accept it as justification for any social norm. Because social norms are created by human beings, and there is no social norm that cannot be changed.

We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We.