Quote

We 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

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: January 1
Feminist
Novelist
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Mind
Course
Expect
Boyfriends
Way
Teach
Daughter
Girlfriends
Men
Knowing
Girls
Forbid
Time
Perfect
Beings
Daughters
Girl
Husband
Sons
Cannot
Boys
Girlfriend
Back
Bring
Sexual
Right
Courses
Son

More quotes by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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I often make the mistake of thinking that something that is obvious to me is obvious to everyone else.
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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?
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Your life belongs to you and you alone.
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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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You can have ambition But not too much You should aim to be successful But not too successful Otherwise you will threaten the man
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I am interested in challenging the mainstream ideas of what is beautiful and what is acceptable.
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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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Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice.
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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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I didn't know I was even supposed to HAVE issues until I came to America
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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.'
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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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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To choose to write is to reject silence.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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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.
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Richard 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 Adichie
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Death would be a complete knowingness, but what frightened him was this: not knowing beforehand what it was he would know.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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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.
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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
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Our histories cling to us. We are shaped by where we come from.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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That her relationship with him was like being content in a house but always sitting by the window and looking out
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie