Head Above Water Quotes

“Living entirely off writing is a precarious existence and money is always short, bit with careful management and planning I found I could keep my head and those of my family, through God's grace, above water.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Head Above Water

“Writers simply have to write, and not worry so much about what people think, because public opinion is such a difficult horse to ride.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Head Above Water

“An uneducated person has little chance of happiness. He cannot enjoy reading, he cannot understand any complicated music, he does not know what to do with himself if he has no job. How many times have I heard my friends say, ' I want to leave my boring job because I want to write, because I want to catch up with goings on in the theatre, because I want to travel and because I want to be with my family. '
The uneducated man has no such choices. Once he has lost his boring job, he feels he's lost his life. That is unfair.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Head Above Water

“Then I ran to her and our relatives laughed. The knots of bystanders were horrified at the loss of her expensive tusk ornaments, but with my hand firmly clasped in hers she reminded them, with her face beaming,'When has it ever been a virtue to be rich in wealth and poor in people?' The relatives nodded. They understood her very well- why have heaven an earth when you have no one to share it with?”
― Buchi Emecheta, Head Above Water

“Relatives watching wanted and expected me to break down and cry, thereby devaluing my inner sorrow. Maybe if I had not stayed in cold England for eighteen years - England, a country where people cry in their hearts and not with their eyes - I would have done so. Eighteen years is a long time, and like the people I live with, I cried in my heart.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Head Above Water

“Before I spoke, the general talk was drifting to women's emancipation, birth control in the Third World, and how the Third World women were suffering. I don't know why I hated people talking about us like that......... So I got up and shocked all those ladies, telling them to mind their own business and leave us Third World women alone. One could have heard a pin drop. I thought at one time I would be thrown out. But I was not.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Head Above Water

“1975 was International Women's Year. I had never heard the word 'feminism' before then. I was writing my books from the experiences of my own life and from watching and studying the lives of those around me in general. I did not know that writing the way I was, was putting me into a special category. I had the first inkling of it on 28 June 1975 when the International Women's League invited me to give a speech.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Head Above Water

“When people are not educated enough for the job market, it is like a time bomb ticking away which could explode in the streets.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Head Above Water

“I was glad, though, for those boys whom we helped to get places at Paddington Coll e of Education. Eighteen months later one boy got his two ' A' levels. And to think that when I first met him his greatest ambition was to kill a white policeman!”
― Buchi Emecheta, Head Above Water