Top 140 Akwaeke Emezi Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “Hope is not a waste of time. It’s a discipline.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

56. “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

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

58. “I knew I was dancing with death every day, especially when I walked outside like that.”

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

61. “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

62. “What if you didn’t think about what you wanted, what you hoped? What if you thought about what was happening instead? How does that change your wants?”

— Akwaeke Emezi

63. “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

64. “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

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

69. “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

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

72. “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

73. “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

74. “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

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

76. “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

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

80. “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

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

82. “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

83. “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

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

85. “It took a minute for Ada to understand, to realize that she was locked away, that all those parts of her he wanted, the parts she wanted to give, the parts that would complete the love they had- all those parts were gone. Or if they weren’t gone, they’d been put somewhere so far away that not even Ada could touch them, let alone Ewan. I watched her face fall and when she started crying, I held her and whispered apologies for what felt like forever.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

86. “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

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

88. “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

89. “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

90. “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

91. “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

92. “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

93. “But it is only a fool who does not know that freedom is paid for in old clotted blood, in fresh reapings of it, in renewed scarifications.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

94. “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.”

— 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. “Secrets do not help truth” -PET.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi