"[D]ue to the conspiracy of the economic system and the power relation between Africans and Whites, my father and my uncles were never allowed the opportunity to earn enough to enable them to assume the responsibility to raise us properly…and become the honourable men and fathers they needed to be… There is no way in hell I could lead a normal life in a shack, which is a distorted, grotesque and unsafe and twisted environment for human habitation, easily contributing to the break down of the family"

"…I had lived in Phokwane all my life where white people were a rare sight. You could only see them if you went to the edge of the village where a few shops were located…they generally looked overfed including their not so small women and children [with] their red faces which must have been responding to the lick of the African sun"

"I was young, volatile and adventurous…I also knew how to put my rags together to look good…I used my good eye for clothing to maximise advantage. I was always raring to go. The city was abuzz with night clubs and disco joints that were jumping at all hours of the night"

"remained the main hope of the African continent, of Black people throughout the world."

"Ende was anxious for an explanation. He looked from his father to the strange object removed from the earth. ‘Dad what’s going on?’ Odula stood up slowly. ‘Let’s go home’. In a raised voice, Ende, blinking rapidly, said, ‘Dad tell me what’s going on? What is in this bag?’"

"To ensure the reproduction of such an economy of pleasure, the posts, palaces, and public places have been filled with buffoons, fools, and clowns at various levels, offering a variety of services—journalists, insiders, clerks, hagiographers, censors, informers, praise singers, courtiers... Their function is to preach before the fetish of power the fiction of perfection. Thanks to them, the postcolony has become a world of narcissistic self-gratification."

"…head the size of a sheep, large ears so it could hear the smallest sound, long, powerful hind legs and rather small forelegs or hands…"

"Chief Popa was a great organizer and threw himself into organizing a faction whose duty it was to defend the Director at all times. For his effort, Chief Popa was rewarded with the Director’s ear. In this ear were bags of rice, cartons of corned beef, cartons of milk, puncheons of alcohol, crates of tobacco, and sundry other good things of life. Popa grew fat on the Director’s ear."

"Deze’s mother told the girls about an elderly man, Jo-seph, who was beaten to death because he tried to stopthe uniformed intruders from taking his bicycle."

"The Bulgarians were not impressed. They wanted the contract directly and not by proxy. They sent the Chief back empty-handed. The Chief returned home, abandoned the contract, went into hiding, and that was that. The Nigerians made a show of looking for him. A solitary policeman was dispatched to trace him. He had no means of transportation, he said, and ended up in a bar somewhere in Ikorodu, a few miles from Lagos. And that too was that."

"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"

"Because apart from his power over individuals, he was a terror to the social fabric of individual nations. Because society exists on the notion that there is right and wrong and that the demarcation between them is clear and unmistakable. But when the Kangaroo makes it possible for right to become wrong and vice versa, then the nation reaps a harvest of turmoil."

"Thus was the Jebs prison built at many times its true cost. It was a truly beautiful prison with manicured lawns, clean cells in dormitory blocks, administrative offices, football fields, a clinic, and other civilized facilities. The Nigerians were very proud of their contribution to the erection of Jebs. They bragged about the numerous millions they had spent on it. But everyone knew the true story, so no one listened."

"The woman, a buxom radiant veteran, cackled, clapping her hands…‘Angel Martha! Na angel you be na. Wetin you wan do? Work for office, abi sell for market?’"

"She had told him, ‘Many men, only God knows where they come from, enter this room with big rods between their legs and chuck them inside me anyhow. After all, they pay money for it. You hear?’ He wanted to tell her that she could do other things instead of taking their money and the pain. But he had no courage"

"Keep it clean and you will not regret entering. Make it dirty, and regret your entry. If marriage is different, then I did not write this."

"They would have to use it sparingly so as not to run out beforethe next visit”"

"I wish we had enough ammunition. Who are they to pushus out? It’s their weapon. Their weapon pushed us out, not them"

"The girls watched the women melt into the thick forest"

"Men, women and children all eventually become victims of war but women always appear to be double victims"

"The men pounced on them, pulling them up forcefully and pushing them out. They never returned… Later, stories were told of how their heads were shattered with heavy iron rods, their brains spilling on the ground. According to the stories, their bodies were dragged to some location and, before long, vultures began to hover around"

"Before anyone could shout ‘take cover’, they heard ‘gboam, gboam, boom, boom, kpoom!’ One fast plane had dropped a string of lethal bombs as it whistled past the helpless traders who had already dropped their goods and were lying flat on the ground… The harassed women got up slowly…"

"So she took Anikwenwa on long walks, telling him that the land from that palm tree to that plantain tree was theirs, that his grandfather had passed it on to his father. She told him the same things over and over, even though he looked bored and bewildered, and she did not let him go and play in moonlight unless she was watching.”"

"This story] would cause her to make a clear link between education and dignity."

"Bits of Gonma’s mother’s flesh were strewn all over the ground. It was heart breaking and the women virtually rent their hearts."

"[The rebel federal soldiers’] favourite pastime was to hunt for and abduct young females or older ones in the absence of young ladies or mere girls, in the absence of either. They had no respect for females found within the invaded areas. They would not kill them. They would rather abduct and violate them"

"she, unlike others, had not spent too much time going round and round in her speech”"

"sharp-tongued, headstrong,” and he often found her exhausting because she was the type of girl who crossed gender lines and “wrestled her brother to the ground”"

"she had believed that her chi and his chi had destined their marriage” and could not otherwise be deterred from her plans to marry him"

"primitive culture instead of a worthwhile topic like African Alliances in the American-Soviet Tensions”"

"How can you love somebody and yet want to manage the amount of happiness that person is allowed?"

"silently carve[s] designs on her pottery uncertain of how to handle a woman crying about things that did not deserve tears”"

"grace in her straight back”"

"Did Nwamgba not know that Obierika was an only child, that his late father had been an only child whose wives had lost pregnancies and buried babies? Perhaps somebody in their family had committed the taboo of selling a girl into slavery and the earth god Ani was visiting misfortune on them.”"

"the Igala and Edo traders, [and] the white-skinned men”"

"lost pregnancies and buried babies”"

"his name [is] Anikwenwa as far as she [is] concerned”"

"But because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye, I went through a mental shift in my perception of literature. I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature. I started to write about things I recognized.”"

"We have big dreams of building libraries and providing books for state schools that don’t have anything in their libraries, and also of organizing lots and lots of workshops, in reading and writing”"

"like a person diligently acting a bizarre pantomime”"

"“Her father found her exhausting, this sharp-tongued, head-strong daughter who had once wrestled her brother to the ground. (After which her father had warned everybody not to let the news leave the compound that the girl had thrown a boy.)”"

"The presence of the delegation from Mboke, Ihiagwa, hismother’s home, was especially conspicuous. ("

"how [stories] are told, who tells them, when they're told, [and] how many stories are told”"

"had bought into the single story”, automatically associating all Mexicans with immigration"

"saved [her] from having a single story of what books are” and becoming another victim of a biased sample of literature"

"“Jaja’s defiance seems like Ifeoma’s experimental purple hibiscus: rare, fragrant with the undertones of freedom, a different kind of freedom from the one the crowds waving green leaves chanted at Government Square after the coup. A freedom to be, to do.”"

"We did not yet have the kind of familiarity with misfortune that cultivated a sense of foreboding"

"A love sip, he called it, because you shared the little things you loved with the people you loved The tea was always too hot, always burned my tongue.”"

"impressionable and vulnerable” when it comes to single stories"