Americanah Quotes.

1. "The only reason you say that race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all wish it was not. But it’s a lie. I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America. When you are black in America and you fall in love with a white person, race doesn’t matter when you’re alone together because it’s just you and your love. But the minute you step outside, race matters. But we don’t talk about it. We don’t even tell our white partners the small things that piss us off and the things we wish they understood better, because we’re worried they will say we’re overreacting, or we’re being too sensitive. And we don’t want them to say, Look how far we’ve come, just forty years ago it would have been illegal for us to even be a couple blah blah blah, because you know what we’re thinking when they say that? We’re thinking why the fuck should it ever have been illegal anyway? But we don’t say any of this stuff. We let it pile up inside our heads and when we come to nice liberal dinners like this, we say that race doesn’t matter because that’s what we’re supposed to say, to keep our nice liberal friends comfortable. It’s true. I speak from experience."
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

2. "Racism should never have happened and so you don't get a cookie for reducing it."
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

3. "If you don't understand, ask questions. If you're uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway. It's easy to tell when a question is coming from a good place. Then listen some more. Sometimes people just want to feel heard. Here's to possibilities of friendship and connection and understanding."
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

4. "Why did people ask "What is it about?" as if a novel had to be about only one thing."
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

5. "Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice."
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

6. "Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I'm Jamaican or I'm Ghanaian. America doesn't care."
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

7. "How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives we imagined."
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

8. "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 make your hair do what it wasn't meant to do."
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

9. "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."
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

10. "When it comes to dressing well, American culture is so self-fulfilled that it has not only disregarded this courtesy of self-presentation, but has turned that disregard into a virtue. "We are too superior/busy/cool/not-uptight to bother about how we look to other people, and so we can wear pajamas to school and underwear to the mall."
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah