There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other things easily forgivable.

I live half the year in Nigeria, the other half in the U.S. But home is Nigeria - it always will be. I consider myself a Nigerian who is comfortable in the world. I look at it through Nigerian eyes.

Culture does not make people. People make culture.

How [stories] are told, who tells them, when they’re told, how many stories are told — are really dependent on power.

There's something very lazy about the way you have loved him blindly for so long without ever criticizing him. You've never even accepted that the man is ugly,' Kainene said. There was a small smile on her face and then she was laughing, and Olanna could not help but laugh too, because it was not what she had wanted to hear and because hearing it had made her feel better.

Our society teaches a woman at a certain age who is unmarried to see it as a deep personal failure. While a man at a certain age who is unmarried has not quite come around to making his pick.

I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue.