“At home in Nigeria, all a mother had to do for a baby was wash and feed him and, if he was fidgety, strap him onto her back and carry on with her work while that baby slept. But in England she had to wash piles and piles of nappies, wheel the child round for sunshine during the day, attend to his feeds as regularly as if one were serving a master, talk to the child, even if he was only a day old! Oh, yes, in England, looking after babies was in itself a full-time job.”
― Buchi Emecheta, quote from Second Class Citizen
“The leaves were still on the trees, but were becoming dry, perched like birds ready to fly off.”
― Buchi Emecheta, quote from Second Class Citizen
“One thing she did know was the greatest book on human psychology is the Bible. If you were lazy and did not wish to work, or if you had failed to make your way in society, you could always say, 'My kingdom is not of this world.' If you were a jet-set woman who believed in sleeping around, VD or no VD, you could always say Mary Magdalene had no husband, but didn't she wash the feet of Our Lord? Wasn't she the first person to see our risen saviour? If, in the other hand, you believed in the inferiority of the blacks, you could always say, 'Slaves, obey your masters.' It is a mysterious book, one of the greatest of all books, if not the greatest. Hasn't it got all the answers?”
― Buchi Emecheta, quote from Second Class Citizen
“She did not delude herself into expecting Francis to love her. He had never been taught how to love, but had an arresting way of looking pleased at Adah's achievements.”
― Buchi Emecheta, quote from Second Class Citizen
“Adah could not stop thinking about her discovery that the whites were just as fallible as everyone else. There were bad whites and good whites, just as there were bad blacks and good blacks! Why then did they claim to be superior?”
― Buchi Emecheta, quote from Second Class Citizen
“She, who only a few months previously would have accepted nothing but the best, had by now been conditioned to expect inferior things. She was now learning to suspect anything beautiful and pure. Those things were for the whites, not the blacks.”
― Buchi Emecheta, quote from Second Class Citizen
“She had gambled with marriage, just like most people, but she had gambled unluckily and had lost.”
― Buchi Emecheta, quote from Second Class Citizen
Buchi Emecheta
Born place: in Lagos, Nigeria
Born date July 21, 1944
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“Time will make it worse! You're...the other half of his soul. He's never going to get over you. And no matter how much you hope that you will... you'll never get over him. You're going to wake up one day and realize what you've done, and you're going to regret the time you wasted apart from him for the rest of your life.”
― Jamie McGuire, quote from Providence
“Don't ever feel that you have to hide who you are. Nothing good ever comes from keeping secrets like that.”
― Lisa See, quote from Shanghai Girls
“I look into the future and see my brother's face, impossibly middle-aged. His daughter has rejected all of his values, and stands now on the dais of a major university, the valedictorian preparing to deliver her commencement speech. What will she think when her dad stands in the aisle, releasing a hog call and raising his T-shirt to reveal the jiggling message painted upon his bare stomach? Will she turn away, as my father predicts, or might she remember all the nights she awoke to discover him: this slob, this lump, this silly drooling toy asleep at her feet.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
“It's like when a kitten tries to bite something to death. The kitten clearly has the cold-blooded murderous instinct of a predator, but at the same time, it's this cute little kitten, and all you want to do is stuff it in a shoebox and shoot a video of it for grandmas to watch on YouTube.”
― Jesse Andrews, quote from Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
“Certain of misfire, my heart threatens to stop.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Fallout
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