We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls 'You can have ambition, but not too much'.

Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice.

Culture does not make people. People make culture.

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.

You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me?' Aunty Ifeka said. 'Your life belongs to you and you alone.

At about the age of seven … I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading: All my characters were white and blue-eyed, they played in the snow, they ate apples, and they talked a lot about the weather: how lovely it was that the sun had come out. This despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria; we didn’t have snow, we ate mangoes, and we never talked about the weather, because there was no need to.

I’m very feminist in the way I look at the world, and that worldview must somehow be part of my work.