Top 120 Nnedi Okorafor Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Use your powers for good instead of evil.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

2. “Silence is the best answer to a fool.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

3. “You are not crazy. You are just ready to change.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

4. “All through the night, she battled herself. Or battled to know herself. She fell apart and then put herself back together and then she fell apart again and put herself back together, over and over.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

5. “Flawed, imperfect creatures! That’s what we both are, oga! That’s what we ALL are!”

— Nnedi Okorafor

6. “To know someone’s pain is to share in it. And to share in it is to relieve some of it.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

7. “When elephants fight, the grass suffers.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

8. “There are more valuable things in life than safety and comfort. Learn. You owe it to yourself.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

9. “A tree with strong roots laughs at storms.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

10. “Prejudice begets prejudice, you see. Knowledge does not always evolve into wisdom.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

11. “Though I knew I shouldn’t have cared, the words still hurt like pinches, and pinches can be very painful when done in the same place many times in a row.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

12. “Lambs think money and material things are the most important thing in the world. You can cheat, lie, steal, kill, be dumb as a rock, but if you can brag about money and having lots of things and your bragging is true, that bypasses everything. Money and material things make you king or queen of the Lamb world. You can do no wrong, you can do anything.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

13. “Science fiction is the only genre that enables African writers to envision a future from our African perspective.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

14. “However, just because something isn’t surprising doesn’t mean it’s easy to deal with.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

15. “I believed I could only be great if I were curious enough to seek greatness.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

16. “We prefer to explore the universe by traveling inward, as opposed to outward.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

17. “People are too focused on money. It’s supposed to be a tool, not the prize to be won.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

18. “If you spend enough time in the desert, you will hear it speak.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

19. “Money and material things make you king or queen of the Lamb world. You can do no wrong, you can do anything.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

20. “How can a man slap his wife ‘in the name of Jesus’? You instructed him to do so! You think I didn’t see your e-mail to him a week ago? ‘Break her with your hands, then soften her with flowers.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

21. “When you face your deepest fears, when you are ready,” she’d said. “Don’t turn away. Stand tall, endure, face them. If you get through it, they will never harm you again.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

22. “I speak my life into existence with each expressed breath I take. I tell you a story within which are more stories. Universes within universes. We are all spinning like small suns. I am like my own sun. I.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

23. “They’re capable of great things, but potential doesn’t equal success.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

24. “In Sankofa’s years on the road, she’d learned that people were complicated. They wore masks and guises to protect or hide their real selves. They reinvented themselves. They destroyed themselves. They built on themselves. She understood people and their often contradictory ways...”

— Nnedi Okorafor

25. “I am Binti Ekeopara Zuzu Dambu Kaipka of Namib,” I whispered.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

26. “My tribe is obsessed with innovation and technology, but it is small, private, and, as I said, we don’t like to leave Earth. We prefer to explore the universe by traveling inward, as opposed to outward. No Himba has ever gone to Oomza Uni. So me being the only one on the ship was not that surprising. However, just because something isn’t surprising doesn’t mean it’s easy to deal with.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

27. “I love books. I adore everything about them. I love the feel of the pages on my fingertips. They are light enough to carry, yet so heavy with worlds and ideas. I love the sound of the pages flicking against my fingers. Print against fingerprints. Books make people quiet, yet they are so loud.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

28. “He was always calling them evil, though he’d never traveled to a Khoush country or known a Khoush. His anger was rightful, but all that he said was from what he didn’t truly know.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

29. “No matter what choice I made, I was never going to have a normal life, really. I looked around and immediately knew what to do next.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

30. “A tiger does not proclaim its tigritude. It pounces. – Wole Soyinka, Sub-Saharan Africa’s first Nobel Laureate.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

31. “They say that when faced with a fight you cannot win, you can never predict what you will do next. But I’d always known I’d fight until I was killed.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

32. “Tribal”: that’s what they called humans from ethnic groups too remote and “uncivilized” to regularly send students to attend Oomza Uni. Over.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

33. “Home will never be the same once you know what you are. Your whole life will change.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

34. “Those women talked about me, the men probably did too. But none of them knew what I had, where I was going, who I was. Let them gossip and judge. Thankfully, they knew not to touch my hair again. I don’t like war either.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

35. “This world is bigger than you and it will go on, regardless.” What.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

36. “Human beings make terrible gods.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

37. “You Himba are so inward-looking,” she said. “Cocooned around that pink lake, growing your technology from knowledge harvested from deep within your genius, you girls and women dig up your red clay and hide beneath it. You’re an interesting people who have been on those lands for generations. But you’re a young people. The Enyi Zinariya are old old Africans. “And contrary to what you all believe, we have technology that puts yours to shame and we’ve had it for centuries.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

38. “My father didn’t believe in war. He said war was evil, but if it came he would revel in it like sand in a storm.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

39. “It was cool in the terminal, but I felt the heat of social pressure.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

40. “Dedicated to the little blue jellyfish I saw swimming the Khalid Lagoon that sunny day in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

41. “I swiped otjize from my forehead with my index finger and knelt down. Then I touched the finger to the sand, grounding the sweet smelling red clay into it. “Thank you,” I whispered.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

42. “I slammed the door in the child’s face, a horrific scream trapped in my throat.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

43. “We cried and sobbed and wept and bled tears. But when we were finished, all we could do was continue living.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

44. “Do not take juju lightly, unless you are looking for unexpected death.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

45. “If there were aliens, they certainly wouldn’t come to Nigeria. Or maybe they would.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

46. “Lies are a thing of the physical world. They can’t exist in the spirit world.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

47. “What’s the matter?” she asked, worried. “I’m afraid of what you’ll find.” “We’ll definitely find some interesting things, but nothing you can’t deal with, Binti. You already are what you are and you’re fine.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

48. “The tarantula scrambles faster, certain that he will make it across. Certain of his extraordinary speed. Crunch.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

49. “You are a Leopard Person only by the will of the Supreme Creator, and as we all know, She isn’t very concerned with Her own creations.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

50. “Suffering is against the Way. Let us end you.”

— Nnedi Okorafor