749 Quotes by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

America has always been aspirational to me.

The best thing about America is that it gives you space. I like that. I like that you buy into the dream, it's a lie but you buy into it and that's all that matters.

It felt strange to call them directly, to hear her father’s “Hello?” after the second ring, and when he heard her voice, he raised his, almost shouting, as he always did with international calls. Her mother liked to take the phone out to the verandah, to make sure the neighbors overheard: “Ifem, how is the weather in America?

If we don't place the straitjacket of gender roles on young children, we give them space to reach their full potential.

As they walked out of the store, Ifemelu said, “I was waiting for her to ask ‘Was it the one with two eyes or the one with two legs?’ Why didn’t she just ask ‘Was it the black girl or the white girl?’”Ginika laughed. “Because this is America. You’re supposed to pretend that you don’t notice certain things.

They had both wanted it to happen and they both wished it had not; what mattered now was that nobody else should ever know.

Obinze imagined him, dutiful and determined, visiting the places he was supposed to visit, thinking, as he did so, not of the things he was seeing but of the photos he would take of them and of the people who would see those photos. The people who would know that he had participated in these triumphs.

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

There were emotions she wanted to hold in the palm of her hand that were simply no longer there.