Top 140 Akwaeke Emezi Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Sometimes, you remember me better than I remember myself. I think that’s important in a friendship – to hold reflections of people for them, be a mirror when they start fading in their own eyes.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

2. “Knowledge can do that to a person, Pet replied. I’ve seen it with you humans. The unseen can tear your eyes open when it comes into sight, and sometimes the mind behind that tears as well.” -Pet.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

3. “There is no right thing, Pet replied. There is only the thing that needs to be done.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

4. “What do you do when you’re not allowed to be angry at God?”

— Akwaeke Emezi

5. “Bitter knew her name was heavy but she hadn’t minded because it was honest. That was something she’d taught Jam – that a lot of things were manageable as long as they were honest. You could see things clearly if they were honest; you could decide what to do next, because you knew exactly what you were dealing with.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

6. “People can do such spectacular things if you forget to tell them it’s impossible. I want them to try.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

7. “If nobody sees you, are you still there?”

— Akwaeke Emezi

8. “The truth does not change whether it is seen or unseen, it whispered in her mind. A thing which is happening happens whether you look at it or not. And yes, maybe it is easier not to look. Maybe it is easier to say because you do not see it, it is not happening. Maybe you can pull the stone out of the pool and put the moon back together.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

9. “Bitter knew her name was heavy, but she hadn’t minded, because it was honest. That was something she’d taught Jam – that a lot of things were manageable as long as they were honest.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

10. “Truth does not care if it feels true or not. It is true nonetheless” -Pet.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

11. “Love is transformative in that way. Like small gods, it can bring out the prophet in you. You find yourself selling dreams of spectacular hereafters, possible only if you believe, if you really, really believe.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

12. “The gods do not care. It is not them, after all, that will pay the cost.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

13. “The angels took the laws and changed them, tore down those horrible statues of rich men who’d owned people and fought to keep owning people. The angels believed and the people agreed that there was a good amount of proper and deserved shame in history and some things were just never going to be things to be proud of.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

14. “You want many things, you are full of want, carved out of it, made from it, yes. But the truth does not care about what you want, the truth is what it is. It is not moved by want, it is not a blade of grass to be bent by the wind of your hopes and desires” -PET.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

15. “Some of the things you know are not true, it said. You have to learn that things might not be real, even if they look familiar.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

16. “The truth does not change whether it is seen or unseen.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

17. “This keeping of a secret, it is not a good thing to keep, you are keeping too many and they do not fit inside your heart, they will keep spaces between you and your humans” -PET.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

18. “I have lived many lives inside this body. I lived many lives before they put me in this body. I will live many lives when they take me out of it.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

19. “I think we’re just figuring out how to survive a world on fire... that it’s okay to be alive.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

20. “You can chase the truth, but who could avoid the moment of hesitation when you wonder if you really want what you’ve been asking for? Kavita knew that what the.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

21. “But I’ve learned that you can’t force forever on the wrong people. They belong exactly where they are, giving exactly what they want to. I don’t ask for anything more. I figure I shouldn’t have to.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

22. “So, yes, people forget. But forgetting is dangerous. Forgetting is how the monsters come back.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

23. “How much of my mother’s life I missed because I was a child.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

24. “The first step to seeing is seeing that there are things you do not see, it said. Jam paused and frowned. I don’t understand. The creature sighed and rustled its fur a little. If you do not know there are things you do not see, it said, then you will not see them because you do not expect them to be there. You think you see everything, so you think everything you see is all there is to be seen.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

25. “People want to be the ones drawing the lines, building the boxes, making the names. Maybe because stories live inside all those structures, and if you’re the one controlling the stories, then you’re the one in power. So they get really angry when you name yourself, especially if you’re the type of thing they were expecting to name.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

26. “Guava-stuffed chicken with caramelized mango and a spicy mango mojito sauce. Alim had ruined mango for her, but every time Feyi remembered how shocked and open his face looked with desire, she wasn’t sure she minded. There was a lemongrass-and-pineapple-glazed pork belly with Zanzibari spiced octopus, grilled jerk watermelon with couscous and a basil oil, and finally, a banana cream parfait with coconut shortbread alongside broiled pineapple with macadamia toffee, drizzled with rum caramel.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

27. “Also, the problem is, when you think you’ve been without monsters for so long, sometimes you forget what they look like, what they sound like, no matter how much remembering your education urges you to do. It’s not the same when the monsters are gone. You’re only remembering shadows of them, stories that seem to be limited to the pages or screens you read them from. Flat and dull things. So, yes, people forget. But forgetting is dangerous. Forgetting is how the monsters come back.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

28. “The world in my head has been far more real than the one outside – maybe that’s the exact definition of madness, come to think of it.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

29. “It’s never too late- that’s a human lie of time, there is no late, there is mostly now, because now is so flexible, I find. You can change a whole life, a whole world, inside of a now.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

30. “Maybe we were all pretending to be fine because the world gave us no other option.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

31. “If you release the idea of the essential self, throw it naked into the surf and let the sea carry it away, then everything changes. Without it, masks take on a new expanse of possibility. They can conceal, yes, but as the magician says, they can also clarify what is true – in precisely the same way a story can tell you something better than stark facts ever could.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

32. “You had to see Pet to accept that it was real in this world; the telling would never be enough. Words are never enough for a lot of things.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

33. “The revolution needs artists, just like it needs healers and storytellers, just like it needs the organizers and protesters. It’s all one big organism working together.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

34. “I would say it was too late, but time has stopped meaning what it used to. I don’t mind anymore. I see how things work now, from this side. I was born and I died. I will come back. Somewhere, you see, in the river of time, I am already alive.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

35. “And that’s something I’ve learned in the years since, that there are so many different types of love, so many ways someone can stay committed to you, stay in your life even if y’all aren’t together, you know?”

— Akwaeke Emezi

36. “They burned down the market on the day Vivek Oji died.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

37. “Remembering is the death of mercy.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

38. “Hope is not a waste of time. It’s a discipline.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

39. “If you didn’t tell other people, was it real or was it just something the two of you were telling yourselves?”

— Akwaeke Emezi

40. “When you break something, you must study the pattern of the shattering before you can piece it back together.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

41. “Hannah Arendt, the political philosopher, coined the phrase “the banality of evil” – that evil is very often “terrifyingly normal.” She knew, as many who have suffered do, that the worst things can happen in the blandest of places – between the lines in a textbook omitting large swaths of history or in the hushing of a child who has something important to say. All these things are done in the name of keeping our worlds safe, consistent, banal.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

42. “Monsters don’t look like anything, That’s the whole point. That’s the whole problem.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

43. “What is love if not a shield thrown up around you when you are too injured to throw it up yourself?”

— Akwaeke Emezi

44. “Let me tell you the truth about men like that – they want soft moons. They want women with just enough crescent to provide a sufficient edge, tender little slivers of light that they can bring home to their mothers.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

45. “It is a one-way trip, my love, you cannot undo being born, you cannot undo the body. There is no rush. It’s okay for it to be slow; you only think it’s slow because it’s flesh. A few decades are nothing, they laugh. There’s no need to destroy the body; the body is already destroying itself, the body is already dying. I take comfort in that. I am already being destroyed, I am already dying and going home, and I have work to do.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

46. “I can see you change,” he told us, his eyes narrowed in interest. “Your body language. How you talk. Your eyes. You’re not always the same person, are you?”

— Akwaeke Emezi

47. “Everyone had always told Feyi growing up that she should stay away from bright colors, that they would be too garish against her dark skin, so it was a delight to stop listening to all of them, to lean into pastels and neons and metallics, rainbows cascading down her back.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

48. “Exactly.” I patted her hand. “We’re the buffer between you and madness, we’re not the madness.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

49. “We wish she had saved it, but that is how humans are. Important things slip past in the moment, when it feels sharp and they are young enough to think that the feeling will remain.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

50. “Adults were like that so much of the time, inflexible when they thought they had something to protect.”

— Akwaeke Emezi