The language of marriage is often a language of ownership, not a language of partnership. - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The longer she spent in America, the better she had become at distinguishing, sometimes from looks and gait, but mostly from bearing and demeanor, that fine-grained mark that culture stamps on people. (Chapter 17) - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we ´should' be rather than recognizing how we are. - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
He often paused before he spoke. She thought this exquisite; it was as though he had such regard for his listener that he wanted his words strung together in the best possible way. - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Gender is not an easy conversation to have. It makes people uncomfortable, sometimes even irritable. Both men and women are resistant to talk about gender, or are quick to dismiss the problems of gender. Because thinking of changing the status quo is always uncomfortable. - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The best thing about America is that it gives you space. I like that. I like that you buy into the dream, it's a lie but you buy into it and that's all that matters. - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
We do not just risk repeating history if we sweep it under the carpet, we also risk being myopic about our present. - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Some people will bring up evolutionary biology and apes, how female apes bow to male apes - that sort of thing. But the point is this: we are not apes. Apes also live in trees and eat earthworms. We do not. - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
There are people who dislike you because you do not dislike yourself. - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
La cultura no hace a la gente. La gente hace la cultura. Si es verdad que no forma parte de nuestra cultural el hecho de que las mujeres sean seres humanos de pleno derecho, entonces podemos y debemos cambiar nuestra cultura. - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
it would hurt him to know she had felt that way for a while, that her relationship with him was like being content in a house but always sitting by the window and looking out. - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there. - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn't have the weight of gender expectations. - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Stories matter. - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person. - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie