749 Quotes by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I don’t believe that art and politics or social issues must be separated. In writing about marriage, for example, money can be a big factor, and money is linked to earning, and earning is influenced by politics.

Something about the way Chinedu said his name, Abidemi, made her think of gently pressing on a sore muscle, the kind of self-inflicted ache that is satisfying.

People will selectively use “tradition” to justify anything.

Boys and girls are undeniably different biologically, but socialization exaggerates the differences.

What struck me – with her and with many other female American friends I have – is how invested they are in being ‘liked’. How they have been raised to believe that their being likeable is very important and that this ‘likeable’ trait is a specific thing. And that specific thing does not include showing anger or being aggressive or disagreeing too loudly. We.

To be a child of the Third World is to be aware of the many different constituencies you have and how honesty and truth must always depend on context.

A woman at a certain age who is unmarried, our society teaches her to see it as a deep personal failure. And a man, after a certain age isn’t married, we just think he hasn’t come around to making his pick.

She had always got along with Ifemelu’s mother, the easy relationship between two people who carefully avoided conversations of any depth.

He was no longer sure, he had in fact never been sure, whether he liked his life because he really did or whether he liked it because he was supposed to.