119 Quotes by Uzodinma Iweala

I want to hug him, to hold him, but I also want to slap him until he can see that, objectively, his life is almost perfect. The world loves him; it takes him seriously; Harvard takes him seriously.

He watches Meredith toss her long brown hair over her shoulder so that we can see the single diamond stud suspended just beneath her collarbones on a thin gold chain. She rolls it between her fingers and it makes her look delicate and pretty. Rowan thinks she does it to look pretty because he thinks all women do all things to look either pretty or fuckable. He has always though Meredith pretty. Now he thinks her fuckable.

He watches Meredith toss her long brown hair over her shoulder so that we can see the single diamond stud suspended just beneath her collarbones on a thin gold chain. She rolls it between her fingers and it makes her look delicate and pretty. Rowan thinks she does it to look pretty because he thinks all women do all things to look either pretty or fuckable. He has always thought Meredith pretty. Now he thinks her fuckable.

I'm walking walking walking to where the sun is setting. I'm looking at it and wanting to catch it in my hand and to be squeezing until color are dripping out from it forever. That way everywhere it is always dark and nobody is ever having to see any of the terrible thing that is happening in this world.

He is patriotic but not sentimental so Mom and I think the placement is ironic but it stays because Dad sometimes feels like a minority in his own home.

This is supposed to be my season to carve my own space if I play my cards right[...] Do I want it? I want so many things, so many competing things. I want to run to win, to run away from myself, to run away from home.

I've always felt weird about coming to Nigeria. Everything is always so overwhelming and aggressive from the moment we step out of the airport and into a country that my father loves so deeply he had to run away from it. But I've never had a choice. No one has ever asked me. Each summer, my father's momentum dragged us all home.

My grandfather lived alone in this room with no one to love for twenty-six years. That kind of loneliness takes real strength.

You cannot unsee what has been seen once the veil is lifted, Reverend Olumide says in church. We cannot return to the garden of Eden. When I meet with him he says I need to confront my fears, that the devil torments us with that which scares us most. So, I cross the line between the blue hallways tiles and the white locker-room floor and navigate my way to locker umber thirty-two.