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If I had not grown up in Nigeria- and if all I knew of Africa were of popular images- I too would think that africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals and incomprehensible people fighting sensless wars, dying of poverty and aids- unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind white foreigner.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: January 1
Feminist
Novelist
Poet
Teacher
Writer
People
War
Animals
Africa
Speak
Dying
Wars
Place
Poverty
Images
Foreigner
Beautiful
Knew
Grown
Landscapes
Kind
Animal
Aids
Incomprehensible
Would
Waiting
Landscape
Nigeria
Think
Fighting
Popular
Foreigners
Thinking
White
Saved
Unable

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Creative writing programmes are not very necessary. They just exist so that people like us can make a living.
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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.
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If you start thinking about being likable you are not going to tell your story honestly.
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Feminist: A person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.
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You deserve to take up space.
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There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other things easily forgivable.
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I recently spoke at a university where a student told me it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had recently read a novel called American Psycho,and that it was a shame that young Americans were serial murderers.
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I’m very feminist in the way I look at the world, and that worldview must somehow be part of my work.
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When we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.
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He was already looking at their relationship through the lens of the past tense. It puzzled her, the ability of romantic love to mutate, how quickly a loved one could become a stranger. Where did the love go? Perhaps real love was familial, somehow, linked to blood, since love for children did not die as romantic love did.
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Culture does not make people - people make culture. So if it is in fact true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, we must make it our culture. [...] A feminist is a man or a woman who says, 'yes there is a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it. We must do better.'
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Is love this misguided need to have you beside me most of the time? Is love this safety I feel in our silences? Is it this belonging, this completeness?
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Perhaps it is time to debate culture. The common story is that in real African culture, before it was tainted by the west, gender roles were rigid and women were contentedly oppressed.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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The higher you go, the fewer women there are.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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Greatness depends on where you are coming from.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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My grandfather died in the war, my family went through the war, and it affected my parents in really profound ways. I've always wanted to write about that period - in some ways to digest it for myself, something that defined me but that I didn't go through.
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I am interested in challenging the mainstream ideas of what is beautiful and what is acceptable.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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I divide my time between Columbia, Maryland, and Lagos, Nigeria.
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If the government doesn't fund education, which they often don't, students are going to stay home and not go to school. It affects them directly. But I'm really not interested in writing explicitly about that. I'm really interested in human beings, and in love, and in family. Somehow, politics comes in.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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Yes, there's a problem with gender as it is today, and we must fix it, we must do better.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie