Quote

Culture does not make people. People make culture.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: January 1
Feminist
Novelist
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Culture
Doe
Make
People

More quotes by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Image
Show a people as one thing, only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Image
When we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Image
The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be, rather than recognising how we are.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Image
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
Image
I didn't know I was even supposed to HAVE issues until I came to America
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Image
This is our world, although the people who drew this map decided to put their own land on top of ours. There is no top or bottom, you see.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Image
The idea that sex is something a woman gives a man, and she loses something when she does that, which again for me is nonsense. I want us to raise girls differently where boys and girls start to see sexuality as something that they own, rather than something that a boy takes from a girl.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Image
I would come, many years later, to understand why To Kill A Mockingbird is considered an important novel, but when I first read it at 11, I was simply absorbed by the way it evoked the mysteries of childhood, of treasures discovered in trees, and games played with an exotic summer friend.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Image
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
Image
I often make the mistake of thinking that something that is obvious to me is obvious to everyone else.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Image
If you followed the media you'd think that everybody in Africa was starving to death, and that's not the case so it's important to engage with the other Africa.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Image
I don't believe that art and politics or social issues must be separated. In writing about marriage, for example, money can be a big factor, and money is linked to earning, and earning is influenced by politics.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Image
The educated ones leave, the ones with the potential to right the wrongs. They leave the weak behind. The tyrants continue to reign because the weak cannot resist. Do you not see that it is a cycle? Who will break that cycle?
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Image
You can't write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Image
I am interested in challenging the mainstream ideas of what is beautiful and what is acceptable.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Image
Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Image
I was stained by failure.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Image
I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Image
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.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Image
The higher you go, the fewer women there are.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie