Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes

Nigerian writer (born 1977)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (; born 15 September 1977) is a Nigerian writer, whose works include fiction, nonfiction, and lectures. She is widely recognised as a central figure in postcolonial feminist literature. Born into an Igbo family in Enugu, Nigeria, Adichie was educated at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, where she studied medicine for a year and half. She left Nigeria at the age of 19 to study in the United States at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and went on to study at: Eastern Connecticut State University, Johns Hopkins University, and Yale University in the U.S. Many of Adichie's novels are set in Nsukka, where she grew up. She started writing during her university education. She first wrote Decisions (1997), a poetry collection, followed by a play, For Love of Biafra (1998). She achieved early success with her debut novel, Purple Hibiscus. Adichie has written many works and has cited Chinua Achebe and Buchi Emecheta as inspirations. Her writing style juxtaposes Western and African influences, with particular influence from Igbo culture. Most of her works explore the themes of religion, immigration, gender and culture. Adichie is a public speaker who has spoken at many commencement ceremonies, including at Williams College (2017), Harvard University (2018), and the American University (2019). She has also delivered Ted Talks, among them, "The Danger of a Single Story" (2009) and "We Should All Be Feminists" (2012). Part of the latter was featured by American singer Beyoncé in her song, as well as being featured on a T-shirt by Dior in 2016. Adichie's awards and honours include academic and literary prizes, fellowships, grants, honorary degrees, and other high recognition, such as a MacArthur Fellowship in 2008 and induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Birth Name: Ngozi Grace Adichie

Alternative Names: Adichie • Ngozi Adichie • Chimamanda Adichie

From Wikidata (CC0)

This was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles

Then she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing him. Need gave him power without his trying; need was the choicelessness she often felt around him.

Jaja’s defiance seems like Ifeoma’s experimental purple hibiscus: rare, fragrant with the undertones of freedom, a different kind of freedom from the one the crowds waving green leaves chanted at Government Square after the coup. A freedom to be, to do.”

A love sip, he called it, because you shared the little things you loved with the people you loved […] The tea was always too hot, always burned my tongue.”

Things started to fall apart at home.”

We will take Jaja to Nsukka first, and then we’ll go to America to visit Aunty Ifeoma,’ I said. ‘We’ll plant new orange trees in Abba when we come back, and Jaja will plant purple hibiscus, too, and I’ll plant ixora so we can suck the juices of the flowers.’ I am laughing. I reach out and place my arm around Mama’s shoulder and she leans toward me and smiles.

Of course God does. Look at what He did to his faithful servant Job, even to His own Son. But have you ever wondered why? Why did He have to murder his own son so we would be saved? Why didn’t he just go ahead and save us?'

Kambili is right,’ she said. ‘Something from God was happening there.’

That night when I bathed, with a bucket half full of rainwater, I did not scrub my left hand, the hand that Father Amadi had held gently to slide the flower off my finger. I did not heat the water, either, because I was afraid that the heating coil would make the rainwater lose the scent of the sky. I sang as I bathed. There were more earthworms in the bathtub, and I left them alone, watching the water carry them and send them down the drain.

She picked up an enterprising snail that was crawling out of the open basket. She threw it back in and muttered, ‘God take power from the devil.’ I wondered if it was the same snail, crawling out, being thrown back in, and then crawling out again. Determined. I wanted to buy the whole basket and set that one snail free.

Rain splashed across the floor of the veranda, even though the sun blazed and I had to narrow my eyes to look out the door of Aunty Ifeoma’s living room. Mama used to tell Jaja and me that God was undecided about what to send, rain or sun. We would sit in our rooms and look out at the raindrops glinting with sunlight, waiting for God to decide.

This cannot go on, nwunye m,’ Aunty Ifeoma said. ‘When a house is on fire, you run out before the roof collapses on your head.’

Morality, as well as the sense of taste, is relative.’

When she made a U-turn and went back the way we had come, I let my mind drift, imagining God laying out the hills of Nsukka with his wide white hands, crescent-moon shadows underneath his nails just like Father Benedict’s.

I thought the Igwe was supposed to stay at his place and receive guests. I didn’t know he visits people’s homes,’ Amaka said, as we went downstairs. ‘I guess that’s because your father is a Big Man.’