Nadirah > Nadirah's Quotes

“Some people can't see softness without wanting to hurt it”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“Fresh starts were good; that separateness was where you could feel yourself, where you could learn who you were apart from everyone else.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“Alone is a feeling you can get used to, and it's hard to believe in a better alternative.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“Ikept the book for the title, for how it was spelled. Beautyful. I had no idea why that spelling was chosen, but I liked it because it kept the beauty intact. It wasn’t swallowed, killed off with an i to make a whole new word. It was solid; it was still there, so much of it that it couldn’t fit into a new word, so much fullness. You got a better sense of exactly what was causing that fullness. Beauty. I wanted to be as whole as that word.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“If nobody sees you, are you still there?”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“If this story was a stack of photographs—the old kind, rounded at the corners and kept in albums under the glass and lace doilies of center tables in parlors across the country— it would start with Vivek’s father, Chika. The first print would be of him riding a bus to the village to visit his mother; it would show him dangling an arm out of the window, feeling the air push against his face and the breeze entering his smile.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“How much of my mother's life I missed because I was a child”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“If you didn't tell other people, was it real or was it just something the two of you were telling yourselves?”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“I felt like I was always running just a few steps ahead of them, holding secrets they couldn't catch up to.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“He didn't belong to you...You keep talking as if he belonged to you, just because you were his mother, but he didn't.

He didn't belong to anybody but himself.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss—you can’t do it alone.”
― John Cheever

“Jealousy is a dangerous emotion. Jealous people are usually so intensely dissatisfied with themselves that they have a burning desire to destroy anyone who has something they want, but feel they can’t have.”
― Sister Souljah, The Coldest Winter Ever

“Somewhere along the line many of us as women are led to believe that being pretty is enough. And while we rely on that, we forget to strengthen our minds so that we can learn how to think, how to build. How to survive. We forget how to live our lives to protect our spirit, to be clean and decent. We forget that everything we do matters so much.”
― Sister Souljah, The Coldest Winter Ever

“You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She's not perfect—you aren't either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break—her heart. So don't hurt her, don't change her, don't analyze and don't expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she's not there.”
― Bob Marley