Top 140 Akwaeke Emezi Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “I knew I was dancing with death every day, especially when I walked outside like that.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

52. “Sometimes, you recognize truth because it destroys you for a bit.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

54. “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

55. “Life was like being dragged through concrete in circles, wet and setting concrete that dried with each rotation of my unwilling body.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

56. “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

57. “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

58. “It is not easy to look at me, I know this very well.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

59. “Your knowing, you think it gives you clarity, sight that pierces. It can be a cloud, a thing that obscures.” -PET.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

60. “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

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

62. “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

63. “You feel like the first time in a long time I can even wonder about a possibility of not feeling alone.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

64. “The first madness was that we were born, that they stuffed a god into a bag of skin.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

65. “It was hard to keep secrets; you had to keep track of them, regulate how they moved through your body, make sure they didn’t swerve and jump out of your mouth.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

66. “That morning, she was wearing an orange cotton dress; she looked like a burning sunset, and Chika knew immediately that his story would end with her, that he would drown in her large liquid eyes and it would be the perfect way to go.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

67. “I know many people survive, but I also think people glorify resilience a little too much, forgetting that the fragile ones simply die as the world walks on over their bones.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

68. “The worst part of embodiment is being unseen.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

69. “Everyone, everything deserved some time to be. To figure out what they were. Even a painting. Bitter finishing it was just her telling it what she thought it was, or what she’d seen it as. It hadn’t decided for itself yet. Jam didn’t want to be rude, or inconsiderate, so she went back to bed.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

70. “She moved like the ground was falling away beneath her feet, the future rushing toward her.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

72. “Everyone, everything deserved some time to be. To figure out what they were. Even a painting.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

73. “There is something bright and brilliant in me. It doesn’t make me feel special. It makes me terribly alone.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

74. “He loves them as a god does, which is to say, with a taste for suffering.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

75. “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

76. “Panic was a vulture inside my body, trying to get out, pecking and flapping wildly at me.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

77. “We’re afraid for you, they said. It’s like you’re on this thin line between being alive and being dead, like one small shift could send you either direction.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

78. “We came from somewhere – everything does. When the transition is made from spirit to flesh, the gates are meant to be closed. It’s a kindness. It would be cruel not to.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

79. “You were like light. I couldn’t help but to turn my face to you if I wanted to keep living.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

80. “It was like a fork in the road has closed, shut off by an avalanche of grief, choked with rocks and a broken heart. It wasn’t supposed to open, and honestly, it still hadn’t, but somehow, an entirely new path had formed, green and creeping.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

81. “Give me an archive of madness that rots. I wouldn’t mind it one bit.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

82. “He was hiding in everyone else’s house as if he didn’t have a home.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

83. “It was better, for now, if Redemption thought he was saving someone else; everyone’s always braver when they think they’re the hero.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

84. “How fast is your alive? How smooth is your alive? How hard, how resilient? We’re alive because we can be hurt; we’re alive because we can heal. I think it’s beautiful. It’s why I fight.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

85. “I lay still and looked at the ceiling until sleep collected me again.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

86. “For a moment, there was the scream of tires and the mad chime of broken glass, the soft petals of white lilies, and a clod of dirt breaking apart in Feyi’s hand, but she brushed it all aside like smoke. “Single,” she’d said in return, stepping right into his personal space. He smelled of rain and bergamot.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

87. “This is how Vivek was born, after death and into grief. It marked him, you see, it cut him down like a tree. They brought him into a home filled with incapacitating sorrow; his whole life was a mourning.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

88. “You find yourself selling dreams of spectacular hereafters, possible only if you believe, if you really, really, believe.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

89. “Some people can’t see softness without wanting to hurt it.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

90. “We understood what was necessary -humans often fail at listening, as if their stubbornness will convince the truth to change, as if they have that kind of power. They do, however, understand forceful things, cruelties – they obey those.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

91. “His grief was chasing him from room to room, begging him to spend some time alone with it.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

92. “I’m not sure my belief matters,” he says. “If it is, it is, whether I believe it or not.” page 161.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

93. “To be singled out and locked into the blurred consciousness of a little mind?”

— Akwaeke Emezi

94. “Think of brief insanities that are in you, not just the ones that blossomed as you grew into taller, more sinful versions of yourself, but the ones were born with, tucked behind your liver.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

95. “I wasn’t worried about failing, because if I failed my life would be just the same as it already was, so there was nothing to be scared of. If I succeeded, however, everything would change, and that was terrifying.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

96. “When you’ve stood on ground and known your child’s bones are rotting beneath you, rage and ego fade like dust in a strong wind.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

97. “You know what’s been happening in your head. You’re the only person who knows. So ask yourself if it feels right, and somewhere, deep inside of you, there’s a compass that will tell you whether you’re right or wrong.” I.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

98. “She didn’t say anything, not wanting to interrupt his silence. Instead, she climbed into the silence with him, staying there, feeling its soft curves.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

99. “It is a different kind of power to be able to anoint yourself instead of kneeling for someone else to do it.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

100. “In the middle of Ada’s pain, I kept looking for a window I could use to take her home. She didn’t even have the strength to fight me, and my plan could’ve work then, except that one day, Ada got a phone call from a number she didn’t recognize. When she picked up, Ewan’s voice poured into her ear.”

— Akwaeke Emezi