We never actively remember death,’ Odenigbo said. The reason we live as we do is because we do not remember that we will die. We will all die.

It was what Aunty Ifeoma did to my cousins, I realized then, setting higher and higher jumps for them in the way she talked to them, in what she expected of them. She did it...

While writing ‘Half of a Yellow Sun,’ I enjoyed playing with minor things: inventing a train station in a town that has none, placing towns closer to each other than they are, changing the chronology...

The language of marriage is often a language of ownership, not a language of partnership.

In particular I want to talk about natural black hair, and how it’s not just hair. I mean, I’m interested in hair in sort of a very aesthetic way, just the beauty of hair, but...

Each of my novels has come from a different place, and the processes are not always entirely conscious. I have lived off and on in America for a number of years and so have accumulated...

Greatness depends on where you are coming from.

But who exactly are the paparazzi? Are they motorcyclists?” and instantly earned himself the nickname Okoli Paparazzi

He looked people in the eye not because he was interested in them but because he knew it made them feel that he was interested in them

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...

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?

One day, I will look up and all the people I know will be dead or abroad.

I divide my time between Columbia, Maryland, and Lagos, Nigeria.

Stories matter.

The best novels are those that are important without being like medicine; they have something to say, are expansive and intelligent but never forget to be entertaining and to have character and emotion at their...

I’ve always been curious about how much of our cultural baggage we bring to what and how we read. I suspect we bring a lot, although we like to think we don’t.

Ma? I think you have the spirit of husband-repelling. You are too hard, ma, you will not find a husband. But my pastor can destroy that spirit.

Mama had greeted him the traditional way that women were supposed to, bending low and offering him her back so that he would pat it with his fan made of the soft, straw-colored tail of...

One day I said to them, Where is the God you worship? They said he was like Chukwu, that he was in the sky. I asked then, Who is the person that was killed, the...

I can write with authority only about what I know well, which means that I end up using surface details of my own life in my fiction.

Her bladder felt painfully, solidly full, as though it would burst and release not urine but the garbled prayers she was muttering.

And it’s wrong of you to think that love leaves room for nothing else. It’s possible to love something and still condescend to it.

There has always been a strange dissonance between the public and the private in Nigeria.

There are people who dislike you because you do not dislike yourself.

Lasting love has to be built on mutual regard and respect. It is about seeing the other person. I am very interested in relationships and, when I watch couples, sometimes I can sense a blindness...

Nigerian politics has been, since the military dictatorships, largely non-ideological. Rather than a battle of ideas, it is about who can pump in the most money and buy the most access.

They had both wanted it to happen and they both wished it had not; what mattered now was that nobody else should ever know.

Relaxing your hair is like being in prison. You’re caged in. Your hair rules you. You didn’t go running with Curt today because you don’t want to sweat out this straightness. You’re always battling to...

We do not just risk repeating history if we sweep it under the carpet, we also risk being myopic about our present.

Successful fiction does not need to be validated by ‘real life’; I cringe whenever a writer is asked how much of a novel is ‘real’.

Today, we live in a vastly different world. The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative. And there...

People often told him how humble he was, but they did not mean real humility, it was merely that he did not flaunt his membership in the wealthy club, did not exercise the rights it...

You know, I don’t think of myself as anything like a ‘global citizen’ or anything of the sort. I am just a Nigerian who’s comfortable in other places.

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. With him, she was at ease; her skin felt...

I have my father’s lopsided mouth. When I smile, my lips slope to one side. My doctor sister calls it my cerebral palsy mouth. I am very much a daddy’s girl, and even though I...

I have been writing since I was old enough to spell. I have never considered not writing.

Papa said that the parish priest in Abba was not spiritual enough. That was the problem with our people, Papa told us, our priorities were wrong; we cared too much about huge church buildings and...

Alexa and the other guests, and perhaps even Georgina, all understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls, but they would not understand the need to escape from the...

Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.

Americans think African writers will write about the exotic, about wildlife, poverty, maybe AIDS. They come to Africa and African books with certain expectations.

They are always so quiet,” he said, turning to Papa. “So quiet.””They are not like those loud children people are raising these days, with no home training and no fear of God,” Papa said, and...

Alexa, and the other guests, and perhaps even Georgina, all understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls, but they would not understand the need to escape from the...

Creative writing programmes are not very necessary. They just exist so that people like us can make a living.

Race doesn’t really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don’t have that choice.

I live half the year in Nigeria, the other half in the U.S. But home is Nigeria – it always will be. I consider myself a Nigerian who is comfortable in the world. I look...

The Red Cross irritated Ugwu; the least they could do was ask Biafrans their preferred foods rather than sending so much bland flour.

You could have just said Ngozi is your tribal name and Ifemelu is your jungle name and throw in one more as your spiritual name. They’ll believe all kinds of shit about Africa.

leading blogger” about race.

I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there.

I think I’m ridiculously fortunate. I consider myself a Nigerian – that’s home; my sensibility is Nigerian. But I like America, and I like that I can spend time in America.