Ajachukwu > Ajachukwu's Quotes

“Racism should never have happened and so you don't get a cookie for reducing it.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Of course I am not worried about intimidating men. The type of man who will be intimidated by me is exactly the type of man I have no interest in.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femaleness and my femininity. And I want to be respected in all of my femaleness because I deserve to be.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough..”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

“There were no incisions on my daughter's body, no lacerations, no scars, not one single lash mark from a previous life. Still they named her Rotimi, a name that implied that she was an Abiku child who had come into the world intending to die as soon as she could. Rotimi - stay with me.”
― Ayobami, Adebayo

“The things that matter are inside me, locked up below my breast as though in a grave, a place of permanence, my coffin-like treasure chest.”
― Ayobami, Adebayo

“I did not ask questions because I did not want to know the answers. It was convenient to believe my husband was trustworthy; sometimes faith is easier than doubt.”
― Ayobami, Adebayo

“But how painful truths are! It is upon us to ask, to beg the mirror to show us the reality. But there should be light no matter where one chooses to look, to search, especially when looking inside one’s own self. No other cavity can be deeper, and darker than one’s self. It is the only place where we shall find all the answers and the only place where we shudder the most before striking a match.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories

“Chains that melt into bones become bones.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, Pushing Gods Out

“A garden is man’s attempt to domesticate nature. And a man is man’s attempt to domesticate himself.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, Pushing Gods Out

“Where did Shanti find the will? It must have been in the garden. An ant and a bird argue over the right to flight. The bird spreads her wings and flies away; the ant sits on an autumn leaf and waits for the wind.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, Pushing Gods Out

“When the mind asks endless questions without receiving any concrete answers, it starts attacking the body. It was either that or Shanti’s water had broken.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, Pushing Gods Out

“We embrace those things that make us unique or odd. For only in these things can we locate and then develop our most individual abilities.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, Akata Witch

“However, just because something isn’t surprising doesn’t mean it’s easy to deal with.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, Binti

“I love books . I adore everything about them. I love the feel of the pages on my fingertips. They are light enough to carry, yet so heavy with worlds and ideas . I love the sound of the pages flicking against my fingers. Print against fingerprints. Books make people quiet, yet they are so loud”
― Nnedi Okorafor, The Book of Phoenix

“Funny how all things people don’t understand seem to be ‘cursed’.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, Zahrah the Windseeker

“They don’t teach them to understand others, they teach them to expect others to understand them,” he said in English. He humphed and said, “Americans.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, Akata Witch

“...because some books won't come directly to you; they go through someone who loves you.”
― Eloghosa Osunde, Vagabonds!

“What I will also say is that women are magicians. I don't mean magic like the kind you were warned to avoid, I mean magic as in spinning story as lifeline, as in turning a wound into a star, as in holding an apocalypse in your core and smiling believably.”
― Eloghosa Osunde, Vagabonds!

“Books mattered, because girls who are at their most real in book pages are sometimes the only reason alive girls get through their years at all.”
― Eloghosa Osunde, Vagabonds!

“In her anniversary card, Daisy wrote: If they say we don't exist, that they can't see us anywhere except rotten corners, in perverse bodies, how come I can see you and hold you and you're holy; how come I can love you and home you and you're there, in flesh, in my mind, in my blood; how come I keep waking up in this love and feel rested? What else to do now then, when a love like this finds you? What else but praise? What else but dance?”
― Eloghosa Osunde, Vagabonds!

“But look how we broke each other in the end. Who could have killed me better than you?”
― Eloghosa Osunde, Vagabonds!

“Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief

“How is it that the world keeps going, breathing in and out unchanged, while in my soul there is a permanent scattering?”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief

“Grief is not gauzy; it is substantial, oppressive, a thing opaque. The weight is heaviest in the mornings, post-sleep: a leaden heart, a stubborn reality that refuses to budge. I will never see my father again. Never again. It feels as if I wake up only to sink and sink. In those moments, I am sure that I do not ever want to face the world again.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief

“I did not know that we cry with our muscles. The pain is not surprising, but its physicality is: my tongue unbearably bitter, as though I ate a loathed meal and forgot to clean my teeth; on my chest, a heavy, awful weight; and inside my body, a sensation of eternal dissolving. My heart – my actual physical heart, nothing figurative here – is running away from me, has become its own separate thing, beating too fast, its rhythms at odds with mine. This is an affliction not merely of the spirit but of the body, of aches and lagging strength.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief

“A thing like this, dreaded for so long, finally arrives and among the avalanche of emotions there is a bitter and unbearable relief. It comes as a form of aggression, this relief, bringing with it strangely pugnacious thoughts. Enemies beware: the worst has happened. My father is gone. My madness will now bare itself.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief

“I back away from condolences. People are kind, people mean well, but knowing this does not make their words rankle less.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief