Top 140 Akwaeke Emezi Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “They burned down the market on the day Vivek Oji died.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

57. “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

58. “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

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

60. “Somewhere, you see, in the river of time, I am already alive.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

62. “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

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

64. “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

65. “Leaders are dangerous. One person is weak; the people are strong.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

68. “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

69. “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

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

71. “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

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

73. “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

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

78. “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

79. “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

80. “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

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

82. “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

83. “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

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

85. “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

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

88. “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

89. “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

90. “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

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

92. “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

93. “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

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

— Akwaeke Emezi

95. “They say terrible things are done in darkness, but terrible things are also done in a light too blinding for anyone else to look at directly.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

96. “How many times have we tried to stand up fully only for them to tell us that we’re being violent for just trying to be whole, that our attempted wholeness was hurting them? They’ve lied to us for such a long time. And I think when we’ve been taught to be afraid of ourselves in such ways, we absorb some of our teachers’ fear.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

97. “It’s basically the same thing, she said. I didn’t have anyone to hold me and now I don’t have anyone to kill me. You’d think he’s come through on at least one of these points.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

98. “I think a lot of what love is, is just telling the truth.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

99. “The room hushed as Alim introduced the first course, and everyone cooed over their plates – fresh oysters in a pool of black squid ink bouillon, served on stark-white china with a sliver of pickled onion and a bright strip of shaved Scotch bonnet on top. There was a dash of black bouillon inside the oyster shell and a rocket flower on the side, delicate and white. Feyi sipped at the accompanying drink, an expensive champagne with pomegranate seeds in it.”

— Akwaeke Emezi

100. “I’m me. I can cook anywhere in the world I want.” He stopped in front of her and smiled, full and radiant. “I’d cook anywhere in the world for you.”

— Akwaeke Emezi