Our society teaches a woman at a certain age who is unmarried to see it as a deep personal failure. While a man at a certain age who is unmarried has not quite come around to making his pick. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie More Quotes by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie More Quotes From Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie If you followed the media you'd think that everybody in Africa was starving to death, and that's not the case; so it's important to engage with the other Africa. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie media important thinking The best novels are those that are important without being like medicine; they have something to say, are expansive and intelligent but never forget to be entertaining and to have character and emotion at their centre. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie medicine intelligent character I like the U.S. and feel gratitude towards it. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gratitude feels Then she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing him. Need gave him power without his trying; need was the choicelessness she often felt around him. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie yellow-sun trying needs I didn't know I was even supposed to HAVE issues until I came to America Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie issues knows america Perhaps it is time to debate culture. The common story is that in "real" African culture, before it was tainted by the west, gender roles were rigid and women were contentedly oppressed. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie west real culture I live half the year in Nigeria, the other half in the U.S. But home is Nigeria - it always will be. I consider myself a Nigerian who is comfortable in the world. I look at it through Nigerian eyes. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie eye home years Creative writing programmes are not very necessary. They just exist so that people like us can make a living. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie creative writing people One of the things that struck me when I came to the U.S. was discovering American poverty. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie american-poverty discovering poverty I had consumed a lot of American culture, but I was not quite prepared for the reality of American poverty. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie poverty culture reality If I were not African, I wonder whether it would be clear to me that Africa is a place where the people do not need limp gifts of fish but sturdy fishing rods and fair access to the pond. I wonder whether I would realize that while African nations have a failure of leadership, they also have dynamic people with agency and voices. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie agency voice fishing The higher you go, the fewer women there are. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie fewer higher Nobody just leaves medical school, especially given it's fiercely competitive to get in. But I had a sister who was a doctor, another who was a pharmacist, a brother who was an engineer. So my parents already had sensible children who would be able to make an actual living, and I think they felt comfortable sacrificing their one strange child. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie doctor parents brother children Non-fiction, and in particular the literary memoir, the stylised recollection of personal experience, is often as much about character and story and emotion as fiction is. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie story experience emotion character The problem with looking in the mirror is that you never know how you will feel about what you see. Sometimes, when my hormones are out of sync, I have no interest in the mirror, and if I do look I think everything is all wrong. Other times, I am quite pleased with what I see. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie mirror i-am look you I often think that people who write a lot about poverty need to go and spend more time with poor people. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie think poverty time people I look young. I heard this said so often that it became irritating. I once worked as a babysitter for a woman who, the first time we met, said she didn't want somebody in high school. I was 22. Later, I realised that in certain places being female and looking 'young' meant it was more difficult to be taken seriously, so I turned to make-up. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie woman look time school My greatest vanity is my skin. It is the colour of gingerbread and, thanks to my mother's genes, smooth and mostly blemish-free. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie skin thanks colour mother 'No Sweetness Here' is the kind of old-fashioned social realism I have always been drawn to in fiction, and it does what I think all good literature should: It entertains you. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie good think you literature For me, feminism is a movement for which the end goal is to make itself no longer needed. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie make end me feminism