Best 22 quotes of Buchi Emecheta on MyQuotes

A hungry man is an angry one.

As soon as I finish a book, I sell the paperback rights to different publishers and that's where I recoup my money.

Being a woman writer, I would be deceiving myself if I said I write completely through the eye of a man. There's nothing bad in it, but that does not make me a feminist writer. I hate that name. The tag is from the Western world - like we are called the Third World.

Black women all over the world should re-unite and re-examine the way history has portrayed us.

But who made the law that we should not hope in our daughters? We women subscribe to that law more than anyone. Until we change all this, it is still a man's world, which women will always help to build.

Few things are as bad as a guilty conscience.

I always value my large kitchen because it was better to do everything there, you wash up, you do everything, rather than messing up another room and I pop my typewriter just next to it. So I still write now but I was doing more writing when the children were younger.

I am a woman and a woman of Africa. I am a daughter of Nigeria and if she is in shame, I shall stayand mourn with her in shame.

I believe it is important to speak to your readers in person... to enable people to have a whole picture of me; I have to both write and speak. I view my role as writer and also as oral communicator.

I came to England in 1962 as a very young bride, in my teens, hoping just to stay two years and go back.

I like to be called a Nigerian rather than somebody from the Third World or the developing or whatever.

I'm not just a feminist - I'm a feminist plus.

I was a threat to a lot of women and to a lot of men. The women cannot forgive me if I remain single and also have a family. But I have a family as well and am raising them. A lot of women only stay in their marriages because of the children so seeing me on my own annoys them.

I work toward the liberation of women, but I'm not feminist. I'm just a woman.

The first book I wrote was The Bride Price which was a romantic book, but my husband burnt the book when he saw it. I was the typical African woman, I'd done this privately, I wanted him to look at it, approve it and he said he wouldn't read it.

When I came to England it wasn't what it is now, then the black people were very rarely strong. I had a personal shock because England wasn't what I expected it to be... where people lived like Jane Austen.

Women should not be suppressed because they are women, because they have children and because of men. Then I am a feminist. But when it comes to the African concept, for the moment, I say 'feminist plus'. We have so many other problems.

I was glad, though, for those boys whom we helped to get places at Paddington Coll e of Education. Eighteen months later one boy got his two ' A' levels. And to think that when I first met him his greatest ambition was to kill a white policeman!

One thing she did not know was the greatest book on human psychology is the Bible. If you were lazy and did not wish to work, or if you had failed to make your way in the society, you could always say 'my kingdom is not of this world'. If you were a jet-set woman who believed in sleeping around, VD or no VD you could always say Mary Magdalene had no husband but didn't she wash the feet of our Lord? 'Wasn't she the first person to see our risen Saviour'? If on the other hand you believed in the inferiority of the Blacks you could always say 'slaves obey your Master. It's a mysterious book, one of the greatest of all books, if not the greatest. Hasn't it got all the answers?

On her way back to their room, it occurred to Nnu Ego that she was a prisoner, imprisoned by her love for her children, imprisoned by her role as the senior wife. She was not even expected to demand more money for her family; that was considered below the standard expected of a woman in her position. It was not fair, she felt, the way men cleverly used a woman’s sense of responsability to actually enslave her. They knew that the traditional wife like herself would never dream of leaving her children.

She had gambled with marriage, just like most people, but she had gambled unluckily and had lost.

Then I ran to her and our relatives laughed. The knots of bystanders were horrified at the loss of her expensive tusk ornaments, but with my hand firmly clasped in hers she reminded them, with her face beaming,'When has it ever been a virtue to be rich in wealth and poor in people?' The relatives nodded. They understood her very well- why have heaven an earth when you have no one to share it with?