I had people read it early on and, you know, well-meaning people said to me, you should take out the blogs. I didn't get much positive feedback. Only because most of these people were protective of me - it was sort of like a "tone it down, make it easier to swallow" kind of thing. And I just thought if I do that then it's not the book I want to write.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieThere has always been a strange dissonance between the public and the private in Nigeria.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRichard exhaled. It was like somebody sprinkling pepper on his wound: Thousands of Biafrans were dead, and this man wanted to know if there was anything new about one dead white man. Richard would write about this, the rule of Western journalism: One hundred dead black people equal to one dead white person.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieThis was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieYou can't write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieDeath would be a complete knowingness, but what frightened him was this: not knowing beforehand what it was he would know.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieWe teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are. If we have sons, we don't mind knowing about our sons' girlfriends, but our daughters' boyfriends? God forbid. But of course when the time is right, we expect those girls to bring back the perfect man to be their husband.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie