Best 273 quotes of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on MyQuotes

Try more strategy and less force. Passion never wins any game, never mind what they say.” He said something similar now: “Excuses don’t win a game. You should try strategy.

Una mujer puede ser igual de inteligente, innovadora y creativa que un hombre. Hemos evolucionado. En cambio, nuestras ideas sobre el género no han evolucionado mucho.

Una vez yo estaba hablando de cuestiones de género y un hombre me dijo "¿Por qué tienes que hablar como mujer? ¿Por qué no hablas como ser humano?". Este tipo de preguntas es una forma de silenciar las experiencias concretas de una persona. Por supuesto que soy un ser humano, pero hay cosas concretas que me pasan a mí en el mundo por el hecho de ser mujer. Y aquel mismo hombre, por cierto, hablaba a menudo de su experiencia como hombre negro. (Y yo tendría que haberle contestado: "¿Por qué no hablas de tus experiencias como hombre o como ser humano? ¿Por qué como hombre negro?").

We condition girls to aspire to marriage and we do not condition boys to aspire to marriage, and so there is already a terrible imbalance at the start. The girls will grow up to be women preoccupied with marriage. The boys will grow up to be men who are not preoccupied with marriage. The women marry those men. The relationship is automatically uneven because the institution matters more to one than the other. Is it any wonder that, in so many marriages, women sacrifice more, at a loss to themselves, because they have to constantly maintain an uneven exchange?

We define masculinity in very narrow way. Masculinity is hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian-speak-- a hard man.

We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian-speak—a hard man.

We have a world full of women who are unable to exhale fully because they have for so long been conditioned to fold themselves into shapes to make themselves likeable.

We never actively remember death,' Odenigbo said. The reason we live as we do is because we do not remember that we will die. We will all die.

We police girls. We praise girls for virginity but we don't praise boys for virginity (and it makes me wonder how exactly this is supposed to work out, since the loss of virginity is a process that usually involves two people of opposite genders).

We're all social beings. We internalize ideas from our socialization.

We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way boys are. If we have sons, we don’t mind knowing about their girlfriends. But our daughters’ boyfriends? God forbid. (But we of course expect them to bring home the perfect man for marriage when the time is right.)

We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way boys are. If we have sons, we don’t mind knowing about their girlfriends. But our daughters’ boyfriends? God forbif. (But we of course expect them to bring home the perfect man for marriage when the time is right.)

What if the parents, from the beginning, taught both children to cook Indomie? Cooking, by the way, is a useful and practical life skill for a boy to have—I’ve never thought it made much sense to leave such a crucial thing—the ability to nourish oneself —in the hands of others.

When we say fathers are "helping," we are suggesting that child care is a mother's territory, into which fathers valiantly venture. It is not.

When you want to join a prestigious social club, do you wonder if your race will make it difficult to join? If you do well in a situation, do you expect to be called a credit to your race? Or to be described as different from the majority of your race? If you need legal or medical help, do you worry that your race might work against you? If you take a job with an affirmative action employer, do you worry that your co-workers will think that you are unqualified and were hired only because of your race? Do you worry that your children will not have books and school materials that are about people of their own race?

White writers can be blunt about race and get all activist because their anger isn’t threatening

- Why should we be feminists? Why not egalitarians? - "Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general- but to choose to use the vague expression human rights (or egalitarians) is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women. That the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human. For centuries, the world divided human beings into two groups and then proceeded to exclude and oppress one group. It is only fair that the solution acknowledge that.

Women must be "covered up" to protect men. I find this deeply dehumanizing because it reduces women to mere props used to manage the appetites of men.

You can't write an honest novel about race in this country. If you write about how people are really affected by race, it'll be too obvious. Black writers who do literary fiction in this country, all three of them, not the ten thousand who write those bullshit ghetto books with the bright covers, have two choices: they can do precious or they can do pretentious. When you do neither, nobody knows what to do with you. So if you're going to write about race, you have to make sure it's so lyrical and subtle that the reader who doesn't read between the lines won't even know it's about race. You know, a Proustian meditation, all watery and fuzzy, that at the end just leaves you feeling watery and fuzzy." "Or just find a white writer. White writers can be blunt about race and get all activist because their anger isn't threatening.

You could have just said Ngozi is your tribal name and Ifemelu is your jungle name and throw in one more as your spiritual name. They’ll believe all kinds of shit about Africa.

You know it was love at first sight for both of us," he said.

You know it was love at first sight for both of us," he said. "For both of us? Is it by force? Why are you speaking for me?" "I'm just stating a fact. Stop struggling." ... "Yes, it's a fact," she said. "What?" "I love you.

Your feminist premise should be: I matter. I matter equally. Not "if only." Not "as long as." I matter equally. Full stop.