Nnedi Okorafor Quotes

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.

People hate what they don’t understand.

We fear what we don’t know.

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

The theme of choice and the power of culture pops up in my stories often. Before Binti, the biggest example of this is in Who Fears Death when Onyesonwu must face the decision of whether or not to go through a ceremony that required cutting off her clitoris. To many readers, the fact that she even has to think about whether or not to do this is shocking. It’s not shocking to me at all, coming from the culture that I come from where the individual is often secondary to the community…

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

Some of our old ways are better forgotten, but not all of them.

Maybe I'm too scared to fly, but I'm brave enough to save your life.

"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."

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…

There is nothing that a man must believe that can’t be seen or touched or sensed.

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…

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

Withholding the truth is lying.

I believe aliens have definitely been here. I don’t think the theory that they have affected, interacted with, exchanged with the people of Earth (human and otherwise) in the past takes away from the accomplishments or innovations of anyone. I think the general belief that certain peoples are less than other peoples is what does that…