Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 218 pages
Rating: (17K votes)
“She could not complain about not having shoes when the person she was talking to had no legs.”
“You wanted to feel disdain, to show it as you brought his order, because white people who liked Africa too much and those who liked Africa too little were the same—condescending.”
“It is one of the things she has come to love about America, the abundance of unreasonable hope.”
“Is it a good life, Daddy?” Nkiru has taken to asking lately on the phone, with that faint, vaguely troubling American accent. It is not good or bad, I tell her, it is simply mine. And that is what matters.”
“The trick was to understand America, to know that America was give-and-take. You gave up a lot but you gained a lot, too.”
“They will always be doomed to supermarkets like this.”
“She had come to understand that American parenting was a juggling of anxieties, and that it came with having too much food: a sated belly gave Americans time to worry that their child might have a rare disease that they had just read about, made them think that they had the right to protect their child from disappointment and want and failure. A sated belly gave Americans the luxury of praising themselves for being good parents, as if caring for one’s child were the exception rather than the rule.”
“It is our diffidence about the afterlife that leads us to religion”
“She imagines the cocoa brown of Nnedi's eyes lighting up, her lips moving quickly, explaining that riots do not happen in a vacuum, that religion and ethnicity are often politicized because the ruler is safe if the hungry ruled are killing one another.”
“How can a person claim to love you and yet want you to do things that suit only them? Udenna was like that.”
“Ujunwa thought she might like her, but only the way she liked alcohol—in small amounts.”
“Nnamabia seemed fine to me, slipping his money into his anus and all.”
“Ikenna, I have come to realize, is a man who carries with him the weight of what could have been.”
“He told you that the company he worked for had offered him a few thousand more than the average salary plus stock options because they were desperately trying to look diverse.”
“How can you love somebody and yet want to manage the amount of happiness that person is allowed?”
“You knew you had become comfortable when you told him that you watched Jeopardy on the restaurant TV and that you rooted for the following, in this order: women of color, black men, and white women, before, finally, white men—which meant you never rooted for white men.”
“She wanted to interrupt and tell him how unnecessary it was, this bloodying and binding, this turning faith into a pugilistic exercise; to tell him that life was a struggle with ourselves more than with a spear-wielding Satan; that belief was a choice for our conscience always to be sharpened.”
“Life was a struggle with ourselves more than with a spear-wielding Satan; that belief was a choice for our conscience always to be sharpened.”
“He said "see" as if it meant something more than what one did with one's eyes.”
“Something about the way Chinedu said his name, Abidemi, made her think of gently pressing on a sore muscle, the kind of self-inflicted ache that is satisfying.”
“She cries quietly, her shoulders heaving up and down, not the kind of loud sobbing that the women Chika knows do, the kind that screams Hold me and comfort me because I cannot deal with this alone. The woman's crying is private, as though she is carrying out a necessary ritual that involves no one else.”
“a clear link between education and dignity, between the hard, obvious things that are printed in books and the soft, subtle things that lodge themselves into the soul.”
“echi eteka, «Mañana está demasiado lejos». Un mordisco, dijo, y en diez minutos se ha acabado todo.”
“Of course they nurse resentment, as they well should, but it has somehow managed to leave their spirits whole.”
“What does it mean to know? Really? Is it knowing-her refusal to think concretely about other women? Her refusal to ever consider the possibility?”
“A sated belly gave Americans the luxury of praising themselves for being good parents, as if caring for one's child was the exception rather than the rule.”
“There were emotions she wanted to hold in the palm of her hand that were simply no longer there.”
“Some people can take up too much space by simply being, that by existing, some people can stifle others.”
“The Tanzanian told her that all fiction was therapy, some sort of therapy, no matter what anybody said.”
“But why do we say nothing?" Ujunwa asked. She raised her voice and looked at the others. "Why do we always say nothing?”
“If we want to resist the powers that threaten to suppress intellectual and individual freedom, we must be clear what is at stake,” he said. “Without such freedom there would have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton, no Faraday, no Pasteur, no Lister.” Freedom was a foundation for creativity.”
“Julie marched over to Matt. She stood in front of him and crossed her arms. “Lift up your sweatshirt.”
Matt rolled his eyes. “God, you really know how to turn a guy on.”
Julie didn’t budge. “If I was trying to turn you on, I could do better than that. Now, lift up your sweatshirt.”
Matt looked up at her and tried to look serious. “Julie, I’m completely offended that you have so little faith in my honesty. I thought at this point in our friendship that you would at least—”
“Get up.” Julie leaned over and shut his laptop. “Get up!” she said again.
“You’re being ridiculous,” Matt said laughing, but he stood up. “I trust you implicitly, and it wouldn’t kill you to show me the same respect.”
“Show me!”
Matt sidestepped the chair and took a few steps backward. “You have quite the attitude today. Suspicious and mean.”
Julie took a step forward, causing Matt to continue backing away. “Lift up your shirt.”
“Look, I appreciate an aggressive woman, but this is really getting weird.”
Julie grabbed his sweatshirt by the waist cuff and lifted it up with one hand, as she pulled down his T-shirt with the other. Matt put his hands over hers, lightly protesting, but she refused to let go. “Aha!” She squinted at his shirt.
“OK, I don’t even know what this is, but it’s definitely geeky.”
“Mina turned in dread and then froze, her heart beating loudly in her ears. He was right there, standing mere feet from her. Jared.”
“aquella operación, los cajones acabaron en una disposición diferente: la correcta. Bosch estaba convencido de que alguien los había sacado todos para registrarlos por debajo y por detrás y luego los había vuelto a colocar en el lugar equivocado. Después,”
“Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their ‘beliefs.’ The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.”
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