“Flawed, imperfect creatures! That's what we both are, oga! That's what we ALL are!”
― Nnedi Okorafor, quote from Who Fears Death
“To be something abnormal meant that you were to serve the normal. And if you refused, they hated you... and often the normal hated you even when you did serve them.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, quote from Who Fears Death
“You know how the story ends. He escaped and went on to become the greatest chief Suntown ever had. He never built a shrine or a temple or even a shack in the name of Tia. In the Great Book, her name is never mentioned again. He never mused about her or even asked where she was buried. Tia was a virgin. She was beautiful. She was poor. And she was a girl. It was her duty to sacrifice her life for his.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, quote from Who Fears Death
“I was young but I hated like a middle-aged man at the end of his prime.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, quote from Who Fears Death
“the girl who was so lovely even her father couldn’t resist her.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, quote from Who Fears Death
“I think juju was worked on us at our Eleventh Rite. It’s . . . probably broken with marriage.” I looked hard at Luyu. “I think if you force intercourse, you’ll die.” “It is broken with marriage,” Diti said nodding. “My cousin always talks about how only a pure woman attracts a man pure enough to bring pleasure to the marriage bed. She says her husband is the purest man around . . . probably because he was the first who didn’t bring her pain.” “Ugh,” Luyu said, angrily. “We’re tricked into thinking our husbands are gods.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, quote from Who Fears Death
“Then I noticed it. Red and oval-shaped with a white oval in the center, like the giant eye of a jinni. It sizzled and hissed, the white part expanding, moving closer. It horrified me to my very core. Must get out of here! I thought. Now! It sees me! But I didn’t know how to move. Move with what? I had no body. The red was bitter venom. The white was like the sun’s worst heat. I started screaming and crying again. Then I was opening my eyes to a cup of water. Everyone’s face broke into a smile. “Oh, praise Ani,” the Ada said. I felt the pain and jumped, about to get up and run. I had to run. From that eye. I was so mixed up that for a moment, I was sure that what I’d just seen was causing the pain. “Don’t”
― Nnedi Okorafor, quote from Who Fears Death
“My mother once said that fear is like a man who, once burned, is afraid of a glow worm”
― Nnedi Okorafor, quote from Who Fears Death
“A tool always begs to be used. The trick is to learn how to use it.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, quote from Who Fears Death
“The Nuru men, and their women, had done what they did for more than torture and shame. They wanted to create Ewu children. Such children are not the children of forbidden love between a Nuru and an Okeke, nor are they Noahs, Okekes born without color. The Ewu are children of violence.
An Okeke woman will never kill a child kindled inside of her. She would go against even her husband to keep a child in her womb alive. However, custom dictates that the child is the child of her father. These Nuru had planted poison. An Okeke woman who gave birth to an Ewu child was bound to the Nuru through her child.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, quote from Who Fears Death
Nnedi Okorafor
Born place: in The United States
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“Just try and live. Try and be happy. Or else, what’s the fucking point?”
― Tillie Cole, quote from Sweet Soul
“Even on the road, we continued our efforts to conceive. Part of our boy-baby effort was the need to try right at the time of ovulation. I packed an ovulation kit with me everywhere. When the strip turned blue, it meant we had a twenty-four- to forty-eight-hour window to get busy.
At first I had Steve convinced that women ovulated twenty or thirty times a month. But I couldn’t trick him forever. At some point he realized that that was impossible.”
― Terri Irwin, quote from Steve & Me
“If you had yourself cloned, who exactly, would be your parents? Can you raise yourself? I guess so. And it might be fun. Just think, by the age of six you'd be driving yourself to school.”
― George Carlin, quote from When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?
“I wasn't convinced a shop girl would know the word 'Oedipal.”
― Shirley Hazzard, quote from The Transit of Venus
“Terre en vacance d'oeuvres d'art. Je méprise ceux qui ne savent reconnaître la beauté que transcrite déjà et toute interprétée. Le peuple arabe a ceci d'admirable que, son art, il le vit, il le chante et le dissipe au jour le jour; il ne le fixe point et ne l'embaume en aucune oeuvre. C'est la cause et l'effet de l'absence de grands artistes. J'ai toujours cru les grands artistes ceux qui osent donner droit de beauté à des choses si naturelles qu'elles font dire après à qui les voit : 'Comment n'avais-je pas compris jusqu'alors que cela était aussi beau?...”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist
The Hummingbird's Da...
Out of the Dark
House of Chains
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