Home > Author > Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
121 " We spend too much time teaching girls to worry about what boys think of them. But the reverse is not the case. We don’t teach boys to care about being likable. We spend too much time telling girls that they cannot be angry or aggressive or tough, which is bad enough, but then we turn around and either praise or excuse men for the same reasons. All over the world, there are so many magazine articles and books telling women what to do, how to be and not to be, in order to attract or please men. There are far fewer guides for men about pleasing women. "
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie , We Should All Be Feminists
122 " I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femaleness and my femininity. And I want to be respected in all of my femaleness because I deserve to be. "
123 " Why did people ask "What is it about?" as if a novel had to be about only one thing. "
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie , Americanah
124 " A woman at a certain age who is unmarried, our society teaches her to see it as a deep personal failure. And a man, after a certain age isn’t married, we just think he hasn’t come around to making his pick. "
125 " There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other things easily forgivable. "
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie , Half of a Yellow Sun
126 " Teach her that if you criticize X in women but do not criticize X in men, then you do not have a problem with X, you have a problem with women. "
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie , Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
127 " My own definition is a feminist is a man or a woman who says, yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better. All of us, women and men, must do better. "
128 " We teach girls shame. “Close your legs. Cover yourself.” We make them feel as though being born female they’re already guilty of something. And so, girls grow up to be women who cannot say they have desire. They grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think. And they grow up — and this is the worst thing we do to girls — they grow up to be women who have turned pretense into an art form. "
129 " Your feminist premise should be: I matter. I matter equally. Not “if only.” Not “as long as.” I matter equally. Full stop. "
130 " Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage. "
131 " How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives we imagined. "
132 " She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself. "
133 " You can't write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be. "
134 " The knowledge of cooking does not come pre-installed in a vagina. "
135 " We did that often, asking each other questions whose answers we already knew. Perhaps it was so that we would not ask the other questions, the ones whose answers we did not want to know. "
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie , Purple Hibiscus
136 " The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. "
137 " If you’re telling a non-black person about something racist that happened to you, make sure you are not bitter. Don’t complain. Be forgiving. If possible, make it funny. Most of all, do not be angry. Black people are not supposed to be angry about racism. Otherwise you get no sympathy. This applies only for white liberals, by the way. Don’t even bother telling a white conservative about anything racist that happened to you. Because the conservative will tell you that YOU are the real racist and your mouth will hang open in confusion. "
138 " And then we do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of males. We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls: You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, pretend that you are not, especially in public, otherwise you will emasculate him. "
139 " I often make the mistake of thinking that something that is obvious to me is just as obvious to everyone else. "
140 " The real tragedy of our postcolonial world is not that the majority of people had no say in whether or not they wanted this new world; rather, it is that the majority have not been given the tools to negotiate this new world. "