Buchi Emecheta Quotes

When people are not educated enough for the job market, it is like a time bomb ticking away which could explode in the streets.

Writers simply have to write, and not worry so much about what people think, because public opinion is such a difficult horse to ride.

And later he burnt the book and I think by that time this urge to write had become more important to me than he realized, and that was the day I said, ‘I’m going to leave this marriage’ and he said “What for, that stupid book?’ and I said, “I just feel you just burned my child.

Then the thought suddenly struck her. Yes, she would go to school.

When my grandmother applied for him for payment he said the estate was insolvent, and the law prohibited payment. It did not, however, prohibit him from retaining the silver candelabra, which had been purchased with that money. I presume they will be handed down in the family, from generation to generation.

Her children were going to be different. They were all going to be black, they were going to enjoy being black, be proud of being black, a black of a different breed.

This old friend of Adah's paid for the taxi that took her home from Camden Town because he thought she was still with her husband.

I did not discover till years afterward that Mr. Thorne’s intemperance was not the only annoyance she suffered from…he had poured vile language into the ears of [Grandmother’s] innocent great-grandchild.

God, when will you create a woman who will be fulfilled in herself, a full human being, not anybody's appendage? ... when will I be free?

Marriage is lovely when it works, but if it does not, should one condemn oneself ? I stopped feeling guilty for being me.

At home in Nigeria, all a mother had to do for a baby was wash and feed him and, if he was fidgety, strap him onto her back and carry on with her work while that baby slept.

Yet that intelligent, enterprising, noble-hearted man was a chattel! Liable, by the laws of a country that calls itself civilized, to be sold with horses and pigs!

Yet the more I think about it the more I realise that we women set impossible standards for ourselves.

But O, ye happy women, whose purity has been sheltered from childhood, who have been free to choose the objects of your affection, whose homes are protected by law, do not judge the poor desolate slave girl too severely! If slavery had been abolished I too could have married the man of my choice; I could have had a home shielded by the laws…

Relatives watching wanted and expected me to break down and cry, thereby devaluing my inner sorrow.