Nnedi Okorafor Quotes

Just because something is not alive, does not mean that it is dead. You have to be alive first to be dead.

It was obvious who the Elders were. Important-looking men wearing important clothes being looked at by everyone else because they were important.

Withholding the truth is lying.

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.

I don’t think about what I write and the way I write as “containers”, nor do I think about what others will see it as. I just write it. I know that I am deeply interested in post-humanism and how our pasts connect with our futures and present. I’m interested in African and Arab cultures and how they both battle and blend and I’m coming at this not as a researcher, but as a participant. I’m interested in technology and spirituality and how they blend and what happens when they blend. I think that my interests and the results of them in my stories lead to very “weird” fiction…

"The problem with you," Force said, "is that you're so used to pain and discomfort that your definition of feeling okay is not the greatest indicator of being okay."

Fear is a prison, and only by facing it can we truly be free.

I’ve never heard the term “numerical synesthesia,” but now that I have, yes, this is how she often sees. This is how she is able to calm herself. This is her path to tapping into the energy of spirit. I’ve also blended it with a phenomenon that I became familiar with while playing sports. “Treeing” was when you were effortlessly performing at a level beyond yourself. It was like looking into time and space and being able to manipulate it, but if you tried to analyze it, you’d fall out of it…

Mortality smelled muddy and wet and I reeked of it.

Though I knew I shouldn't have cared, the words still hurt like pinches. And pinches can be very painful when done in the same place many times in a row.

If you could, wouldn’t you replace your damaged legs with cybernetic ones? Why hold on to malfunctioning or poorly formed flesh and bone because “we were born with it”? That’s something said only by people who have no choice or have no actual experience with being…unable. What makes you you, really? I’m a mechanic. When something isn’t working, you replace it with something better, something that is working.

I will never believe in Christ or Allah or any other God. I will never follow any religion.

Is it better to give or receive?
"They're the same," I said. "One can't exist without the other. But if you keep giving without receiving, you're a fool."

However, time doesn’t change the essence of what you are.

I speak my life into existence with each expressed breath I take. I tell you a story within which are more stories. Universes within universes. We are all spinning like small suns. I am like my own sun.