Top 500 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

402. “Are you the first person to have this problem? You have to get up and hustle. Everybody is hustling, Lagos is about hustling,” Nneoma said.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

403. “For me, feminism is always contextual.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

404. “Everybody will have an opinion about what you should do, but what matters is what you want for yourself, and not what others want you to want.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

405. “Those plates, with their amateur finishing, the slight lumpiness of the edges, would never be shown in the presence of guests in Nigeria. He still was not sure whether Emenike had become a person who believed that something was beautiful because it was handmade by poor people in a foreign country, or whether he had simply learned to pretend so.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

406. “She had a formidable air; a person who went about setting everyone and everything right in the world.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

407. “When your uncle first married me, I worried because I thought those women outside would come and displace me from my home. I now know that nothing he does will make my life change. My life will only change if I want it to change.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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

— 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. “Do it together. Remember in primary school we learned that a verb is a ‘doing’ word? Well, a father is as much a verb as a mother.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

415. “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

416. “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

417. “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

418. “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

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

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

420. “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

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

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

422. “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

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

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

424. “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

425. “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

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

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

427. “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

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

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

431. “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

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

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

435. “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

436. “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

437. “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

438. “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

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. “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

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

— 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