Top 500 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “They ticked the boxes of a certain kind of enlightened, educated middle-classness, the love of dresses that were more interesting than pretty, the love of the eclectic, the love of what they were supposed to love. Ifemelu imagined them when they traveled: they would collect unusual things and fill their homes with them, unpolished evidence of their polish.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

402. “A book did not qualify as literature unless it had polysyllabic words and incomprehensible passages.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

403. “My advice is that you wait. You can love without making love. It is a beautiful way of showing your feelings but it brings responsibility, great responsibility, and there is no rush.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

404. “You look like a black American” was his ultimate compliment, which he told her when she wore a nice dress, or when her hair was done in large braids.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

405. “She heard his words like a melody and she felt herself breathing unevenly, gulping at the air. She would not cry, it was ridiculous to cry after so long, but her eyes were filling with tears and there was a boulder in her chest and a stinging in her throat. The tears felt itchy. She made no sound. He took her hand in his, both clasped on the table, and between them silence grew, an ancient silence that they both knew. She was inside this silence and she was safe.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

406. “We should not be asking whether a woman can “do it all” but how best to support parents in their dual duties at work and at home.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

407. “You can’t even read American fiction to get a sense of how actual life is lived these days. You read American fiction to learn about dysfunctional white folk doing things that are weird to normal white folks.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

408. “She felt a sense that things were in order, the way they were meant to be, and that even if they tumbled down once in a while, in the end they would come back together again.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

409. “She felt bitter toward them at first, because when she tried to talk about the things she had left behind in Nsukka – her books, her piano, her clothes, her china, her wigs, her Singer sewing machine, the television – they ignored her and started to talk about something else. Now she understood that nobody talked about the things left behind.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

410. “It’s a novel, right? What’s it about?” Why did people ask “What is it about?” as if a novel had to be about only one thing.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

411. “And when, all those years ago, I looked the word up in the dictionary, it said: Feminist: a person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

412. “Look, all of them are white women. This one is supposed to be Hispanic, we know this because they wrote two Spanish words here, but she looks exactly like this white woman, no difference in her skin tone and hair and features. Now, I’m going to flip through, page by page, and you tell me how many black women you see.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

413. “Of course they nurse resentment, as they well should, but it has somehow managed to leave their spirits whole.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

414. “Why does it have to be you as a woman? Why not you as a human being?” This type of question is a way of silencing a person’s specific experiences.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

415. “She told him how she very much wanted God to exist but feared He did not...”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

416. “The more civilians you bomb, the more resistance you grow.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

417. “You must nod back when a black person nods at you in a heavily white area. It is called the black nod. It is a way for black people to say “You are not alone, I am here too.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

418. “She began to like him because he liked her.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

419. “When Buchi said “Amen!” with that delight, that gusto, Obinze feared she would grow up to be a woman who, with that word “amen,” would squash the questions she wanted to ask of the world.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

420. “They never said “I don’t know.” They said, instead, “I’m not sure,” which did not give any information but still suggested the possibility of knowledge.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

421. “White writers can be blunt about race and get all activist because their anger isn’t threatening.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

422. “Ugwu had saved them, the same way he saved old sugar cartons, bottle corks, even yam peels. It came with never having had much, she knew, the inability to let go of things, even things that were useless. So when she was in the kitchen with him, she talked about the need to keep only things that were useful, and she hoped he would not ask her how the fresh flowers, then, were useful.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

423. “Don’t think that raising her feminist means forcing her to reject femininity. Feminism and femininity are not exclusive.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

424. “What struck me – with her and with many other female American friends I have – is how invested they are in being ‘liked’. How they have been raised to believe that their being likeable is very important and that this ‘likeable’ trait is a specific thing. And that specific thing does not include showing anger or being aggressive or disagreeing too loudly. We.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

425. “And remember that it’s not about you. American Blacks are not telling you that you are to blame. They are just telling you what is. If you don’t understand, ask questions. If you’re uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway. It’s easy to tell when a question is coming from a good place. Then listen some more. Sometimes people just want to feel heard. Here’s to possibilities of friendship and connection and understanding.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

426. “Once she had told him, “The thing about cross-cultural relationships is that you spend so much time explaining. My ex-boyfriends and I spent a lot of time explaining. I sometimes wondered whether we would even have anything at all to say to each other if we were from the same place,” and it pleased him to hear that, because it gave his relationship with her a depth, a lack of trifling novelty. They were from the same place and they still had a lot to say to each other.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

427. “He said “see” as if it meant something more than what one did with one’s eyes.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

428. “He often paused before he spoke. She thought this exquisite; it was as though he had such regard for his listener that he wanted his words strung together in the best possible way.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

429. “Do not measure her on a scale of what a girl should be. Measure her on a scale of being the best version of herself.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

430. “Saintliness is not a prerequisite for dignity.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

431. “I like politics and history and am happiest when having a good argument about ideas.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

432. “Her entire body was invaded by millions of uncertainties.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

433. “She did not understand grunge, the idea of looking shabby because you could afford not to be shabby; it mocked true shabbiness.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

434. “Yet such men do not need to imagine a male victim of crime as a brother or son in order to feel empathy.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

435. “Teach her to question men who can have empathy for women only if they see them as relational rather than as individual equal humans.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

436. “Something about the way Chinedu said his name, Abidemi, made her think of gently pressing on a sore muscle, the kind of self-inflicted ache that is satisfying.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

437. “America’s tribalisms – race, ideology, and region – became clear.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

438. “He realized that what he wanted most of all, with her, was time.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

439. “They said “soon” to each other often, and “soon” gave their plan the weight of something real.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

440. “The simplest solution to the problem of race in America? Romantic love. Not friendship. Not the kind of safe, shallow love where the objective is that both people remain comfortable. But real deep romantic love, the kind that twists you and wrings you out and makes you breathe through the nostrils of your beloved.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

441. “Defiance is like marijuana – it is not a bad thing when it is used right.” The.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

442. “He was always thinking of what else to do and she told him that it was rare for her, because she had grown up not doing, but being.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

443. “We watch films in class,” she told Obinze. “They talk about films here as if films are as important as books. So we watch films and then we write a response paper and almost everybody gets an A. Can you imagine? These Americans are not serious.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

444. “Happiness becomes a weakness because it leaves you defenseless in the face of grief.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

445. “When we say fathers are “helping,” we are suggesting that child care is a mother’s territory, into which fathers valiantly venture. It is not.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

446. “Anyway, since feminism was un-African, I decided I would now call myself a Happy African Feminist. Then a dear friend told me that calling myself a feminist meant that I hated men. So I decided I would now be a Happy African Feminist Who Does Not Hate Men. At some point I was a Happy African Feminist Who Does Not Hate Men and Who Likes to Wear Lip Gloss and High Heels for Herself and Not For Men. Of.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

447. “You read American fiction to learn about dysfunctional white folk doing things that are weird to normal white folks.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

448. “You can’t nice your way to being loved.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

449. “Books will help her understand and question the world, help her express herself, and help her in whatever she wants to become – a chef, a scientist, a singer, all benefit from the skills that reading brings.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

450. “I am writing about my father in the past tense, and I cannot believe I am writing about my father in the past tense.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie