749 Quotes by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way boys are.

We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage.

Some people can take up too much space by simply being, that by existing, some people can stifle others.

And remember that it’s not about you. American Blacks are not telling you that you are to blame. They are just telling you what is. If you don’t understand, ask questions. If you’re uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway. It’s easy to tell when a question is coming from a good place. Then listen some more. Sometimes people just want to feel heard. Here’s to possibilities of friendship and connection and understanding.

This was love, to be eager for tomorrow.

She wanted to interrupt and tell him how unnecessary it was, this bloodying and binding, this turning faith into a pugilistic exercise; to tell him that life was a struggle with ourselves more than with a spear-wielding Satan; that belief was a choice for our conscience always to be sharpened.

Before, she would have said, “I know,” that peculiar American expression that professed agreement rather than knowledge.

If we do something over and over, it becomes normal. If we see the same thing over and over, it becomes normal.

He was left-leaning and well-meaning, crippled by his acknowledgement of his own many privileges. He never allowed himself to have an opinion. ‘Yes, I see what you mean,’ he said often.