Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie More Quotes by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie More Quotes From Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye … I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie colorgirlhair I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie back-homehomethinking I think my first general rule is that most of my experiences are not that interesting. It's usually other people's experiences. It's not that entirely conscious. Somebody tells me a story or, you know, repeats an anecdote that somebody else told them and I just feel like I have to write it down so I don't forget - that means for me, something made it fiction-worthy. Interesting things never happen to me, so maybe two or three times when they do, I have to use them, so I write them down. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writingmeanthinking You can't write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie mindwritinginspiring She wanted to ask him why they were all strangers who shared the same last name. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie lastsstrangernames He was making her feel small and absurdly petulant and, worse yet, she suspected he was right. She always suspected he was right. For a brief irrational moment, she wished she could walk away from him. 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 momentstryingneeds You Americans, always peering under people's beds to look for communism. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie bedpeoplelooks 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 abilitypersonsstories Being defiant can be a good thing sometimes," Aunty Ifeoma said. "Defiance is like marijuana - it is not a bad thing when it is used right. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie marijuanagood-thingssometimes We did that often, asking each other questions whose answers we already knew. Perhaps it was so that we would not ask the other questions, the ones whose answers we did not want to know. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie askinganswerswant I recently spoke at a university where a student told me it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had recently read a novel called American Psycho,and that it was a shame that young Americans were serial murderers. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie charactermenfather Show a people as one thing, only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie one-thingshowspeople ...there was cement in her soul. It had been there for a while, an early morning disease of fatigue, shapeless desires, brief imaginary glints of other lives she could be living, that over the months melded into a piercing homesickness. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie souldesiremorning I am a bit of a fundamentalist when it comes to black women's hair. Hair is hair - yet also about larger questions: self-acceptance, insecurity and what the world tells you is beautiful. For many black women, the idea of wearing their hair naturally is unbearable. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie acceptancehairbeautiful 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 to the problem acknowledge that. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie groupstwoworld 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 myopiccarpetrisk You deserve to take up space. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie spacedeserve There are many different ways to be poor in the world but increasingly there seems to be one single way to be rich. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie differentwayworld How [stories] are told, who tells them, when they’re told, how many stories are told — are really dependent on power. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie dependentstories I can write with authority only about what I know well, which means that I end up using surface details of my own life in my fiction. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie detailswritingmean
