I didn't want to be apologetic about my love story, and I think to be willing to write about love you have to be willing to sound foolish. I wanted to write about foolish and goofy love and different relationships. I wanted to write about interracial relationships in a way that does not pretend as if race does not exist.

How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives we imagined.

The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be, rather than recognising how we are.

Greatness depends on where you are coming from.

Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.

Being defiant can be a good thing sometimes," Aunty Ifeoma said. "Defiance is like marijuana - it is not a bad thing when it is used right.

Each time he suggested they get married, she said no. They were too happy, precariously so, and she wanted to guard that bond; she feared that marriage would flatten it into a prosaic partnership.