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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes

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Famous Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes

“In primary school in south-eastern Nigeria, I was taught that Hosni Mubarak was the president of Egypt. I learned the same thing in secondary school. In university, Mubarak was still president of Egypt. I came to assume, subconsciously, that he - and others like Paul Biya in Cameroon and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya - would never leave.”

StillsSchoolPresidentTaughtAssumingSouthUniversityPrimariesEgyptEasternNigeriaLibyaPrimary SchoolGaddafiSecondary SchoolMubarakCameroonMuammar Gaddafi
Author:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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“I think it's important to humanize history; fiction can help us remember. A lot of books I've read in the past have been so much more important than textbooks - there is an emotional connection with one particular person. I'm very much of a research-is-important type of fiction writer, even for contemporary fiction. I wrote about blogs in America and I've never blogged. But I read many, many blogs - usually about feminist things, or about race, or about hair.”

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Author:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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“It is easy to romanticize poverty, to see poor people as inherently lacking agency and will. It is easy to strip them of human dignity, to reduce them to objects of pity. This has never been clearer than in the view of Africa from the American media, in which we are shown poverty and conflicts without any context.”

PeopleHumansEasyPoorViewsPovertyMediaObjectsConflictDignityPityAgencyLackingPoor PeopleBadassHuman DignityPersonal DignityAmerican Media
Author:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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“The novels I love, the ones I remember, the ones I re-read, have an empathetic human quality, or 'emotional truth'. This quality is difficult to fully define, but I always recognise it when I see it: it is different from honesty and more resilient than fact, something that exists not in the kind of fiction that explains but in the kind that shows.”

HumansKindDifferentFactsShowsRememberDifficultFictionQualityNovelHonestyEmotionalRecogniseResilientEmpatheticHuman Qualities
Author:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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“There's something very lazy about the way you have loved him blindly for so long without ever criticizing him. You've never even accepted that the man is ugly,' Kainene said. There was a small smile on her face and then she was laughing, and Olanna could not help but laugh too, because it was not what she had wanted to hear and because hearing it had made her feel better.”

MenWayFeelsLongMadeSaidHelpingWantedFacesLaughingUglyHearingAcceptedLazyCriticizeFeel Better
Book:Half of a Yellow Sun
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“Her blog was doing well, with thousands of unique visitors each month, and she was earning good speaking fees, and she had a fellowship at Princeton and a relationship with Blaine - "You are the absolute love of my life," he'd written in her last birthday card - and yet there was cement in her soul. It had been there for a while, an early morning disease of fatigue, shapeless desires, brief imaginary glints of other lives she could be living, that over the months melded into a piercing homesickness.”

WellsSoulLastsDesireMorningWrittenMonthsDiseaseUniqueAbsolutesCardsImaginaryEarningFatigueFellowshipBlogsVisitorsFeesCementEarly MorningHomesicknessPiercingsLove Of My LifePrincetonBirthday CardEach MonthAbsolute Love
Book:Americanah
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“There are people who think that we cannot rule ourselves because the few times we tried, we failed, as if all the others who rule themselves today got it right the first time. It is like telling a crawling baby who tries to walk, and then falls back on his buttocks, to stay there. As if the adults walking past him did not crawl, once”

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Author:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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