Top 120 Nnedi Okorafor Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Suffering is against the Way. Let us end you.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

52. “I was a trapped animal. Not trapped by the women, the house, or tradition. I was trapped by life. Like I had been a free spirit for millennia and then one day something snatched me up, something violent and angry and vengeful, and I was pulled into the body that I now resided in.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

53. “Lesson one,” Anatov said. “And this is for all of you. Learn how to learn. Read between the lines. Know what to take and what to discard.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

54. “The way people on Oomza Uni were so diverse and everyone handled that as if it were normal continued to surprise me. It was so unlike Earth, where wars were fought over and because of differences and most couldn’t relate to anyone unless they were similar.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

55. “My father said that my curiosity was the last obstacle I had to overcome to be a true master harmonizer. If there was one thing my father and I disagreed on, it was that; I believed I could only be great if I were curious enough to seek greatness.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

56. “Is it not the worst pain to know there is a cure for your child’s illness and then not be able to obtain it? Oh it must be the one of the worst types of pain in the world...”

— Nnedi Okorafor

57. “There is witchcraft in science and a science to witchcraft. Both will conspire against you eventually.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

58. “My mother once said that fear is like a man who, once burned, is afraid of a glow worm.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

59. “Maybe I’m too scared to fly, but I’m brave enough to save your life.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

60. “His anger was rightful, but all that he said was from what he didn’t truly know.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

61. “Sometimes a man must throw caution to the wind.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

62. “Work a little harder and be more confident. Our bond is broken; some compensation is required. It’s like loving and cherishing someone without needing the bonds of marriage to enforce it,” Anyanwu said. “By sinister means, you and I are free.” Sunny sat with Anyanwu’s words, staring into the pouring rain.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

63. “Change was constant. Change was my destiny. Growth.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

64. “Human beings have a hard time relating to that which does not resemble them. It’s your greatest flaw.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

65. “I’m not meant to stay here. You know it. You’ve always known it. I was always going out into the desert. You know? Because it’s huge, it’s vast. When I look back, the desert and space, they feel similar.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

66. “They don’t teach them to understand others, they teach them to expect others to understand them,” he said in English. He humphed and said, “Americans.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

67. “I whimpered, biting my lip. “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here,” i whispered. Because I was and there was no way out.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

68. “Then there was Heru. I had never spoken to him, but we smiled across the table at each other during mealtimes. He was from one of those cities so far from mine that they seemed like a figment of my imagination, where there was snow and where men rode those enormous gray birds and the women could speak with those birds without moving their mouths.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

69. “Fate is fixed like brittle crystal in the dark.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

70. “Adaora was beginning to see why Ayodele’s people had chosen the city of Lagos. If they’d landed in New York, Tokyo or London, the governments of these places would have quickly swooped to hide, isolate and study the aliens. Here in Lagos, there was no such order.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

71. “Butterflies understand the desert well. That’s why they move this way and that. They’re always Holding Conversation with the land. They talk as much as they listen. It’s in the desert’s language that you call the butterflies.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

72. “Humans. Always performing.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

73. “It’s as I taught you: the world is bigger and more important than you.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

74. “Now, in her fourteenth year on earth, if there was one rule she lived by it was the fact that Stories were soothsayers, truth-tellers and liars.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

75. “If you don’t recognize yourself, then who is the one who reminds you of who you are?”

— Nnedi Okorafor

76. “I want you to write yourself into history because no matter what history books say, even you are a part of it.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

77. “How different my life would have been if my parents had just let me dance.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

78. “Sometimes too much knowledge can make you mean. You know too much.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

79. “Funny how all things people don’t understand seem to be ‘cursed’.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

80. “We’ll never know exactly why we are, what we are, and so on. All you can do is follow your path all the way to the wilderness, and then you continue along because that’s what must be.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

81. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend... even if it’s a monster.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

82. “Two footsteps do not make a path.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

83. “A tool always begs to be used. The trick is to learn how to use it.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

84. “I felt the pain and the glory of growth, was straining and shuddering with it.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

85. “Overconsumption is a universal human trait,” Orlu pointed out. “And so is ignorance.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

86. “Having curiosity is the only way to learn.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

87. “Even back then I had changed things, and I didn’t even know it. When I should have reveled in this gift, instead, I’d seen myself as broken. But couldn’t you be broken and still bring change?”

— Nnedi Okorafor

88. “Feet away, Professor Dema stood, carrying a large gunlike weapon with both her hands and a snarl on her lips. This was not the way final exams were supposed to go.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

89. “As the day progressed we moved inside. Well into the night, we talked about nothing much of substance. Insignificance. Wonderful unimportance.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

90. “I was young but I hated like a middle-aged man at the end of his prime.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

91. “It grows because it’s alive.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

92. “I’d seen myself as broken. But couldn’t you be broken and still bring change?”

— Nnedi Okorafor

93. “Then I slid a slice of white milky dessert on my tray. I did not know its name, but it was easily the most wonderful thing I’d ever tasted. Each bite would fuel my mental well-being.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

94. “When she was afraid, nervous, or uncomfortable, all she had to do was focus on the science to feel balanced again. It was no different now.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

95. “We all are born with burdens. Some of us more than others.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

96. “Her story travelled like an ancestor, always ahead of, beside and behind her.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

97. “Whenever my father allowed me to buy a new book, I spent hours in my room with my eyes closed as I listened to it on my astrolabe. In many of those stories, a curious person would find a secret or magical object that would change her or his life. I’d always wanted that to happen to me. And now I was sure this was it.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

98. “School will bring you more success than marriage.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

99. “I frowned. They sounded like the same thing to me, gain and purpose.”

— Nnedi Okorafor

100. “Sunny nodded. But her mind was not on the problems of the black African diaspora. She was thinking about what it was going to be like to meet with a giant sentient spider who was thousands, maybe millions, of years old while she was impaired by doubling.”

— Nnedi Okorafor