13 Quotes by Chinelo Okparanta

Let peace be. Let life be.

You'll marry your studies? Marry your books? You already have one degree but you want another. You'll marry your degrees?

And now she began muttering to herself. "God , who created you, must have known what He did. Enough is enough.

...as if in rebellion, certain emotions become amplified at the exact moments when you are expected not to feel them at all.

Aunty, whatever the matter, just remember that it is the same moon that wanes today that will be full tomorrow. And even the sun, however long it disappears, it always shines again.

Shame is the power we give others to wield over us.

The power of science. Sometimes she thought how one day even love might become like a science. Everyone saying exactly the same right words. Everyone reacting the same exact ways. Love feeling and tasting and looking exactly the way some scientists in some laboratory determined that it should. Perhaps a development like that would solve many romantic disputes, maybe even bring down divorce rates to a cool zero percent.

… if we don’t care enough about our own country to take care of it, then why should we expect anyone else to care?”“The rest of the world still has a moral obligation to care…” “All right, so the UK and the US should tell us again how to run our own country? Bring back colonialism?

Chinasa continued to imagine the girl, a small, veil-wearing child with fear written all over her face, running for dear life. Soon she could see herself as the girl, running and running like the girl. But there was only so far her imagination could take her: She herself had never been a runner. And anyway, how fast did one have to run to outrun a bomb?