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.

Some people ask: "Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?" Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general-but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women.

Show a people as one thing, only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.

Red was the blood of the siblings massacred in the North, black was for mourning them, green was for the prosperity Biafra would have, and, finally, the half of a yellow sun stood for the glorious future.

This was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles.

Privilege blinds, because it's in its nature to blind. Don't let it blind you too often. Sometimes you will need to push it aside in order to see clearly.

When the writing is going well, I'm obsessive. I don't shower, I don't take phone calls, I hardly respond to text messages, I don't do email. I take breaks only to read, and usually I read poetry. When it's not going well, I just lie in bed and eat chocolate.