"“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.)”"

"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.”"

"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.”"

"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"

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

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

"like a person diligently acting a bizarre pantomime”"

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

"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”"

"grace in her straight back”"

"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"

"regain a kind of paradise” and see people as more than just one incomplete idea"

"“to create a single story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become”"

"What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children.”"

"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"

"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.”"

"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.”"

"Teach Chizalum to read”"

"“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.”"

"Pop music can cause you to become a drug addict. Before Lucifer was thrown out of Heaven, he was the angel of music, and so it's only logical that the communists will use pop music to take over the Republic."

"(Marnus, 67)"

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

"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”"

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

"“Don’t worry about me, Big Sister. Christianity and Islam are foreign religions that don’t merit my attention anymore...The ancestral way our fathers worshiped God is the best way for me."

"I need protekson; no one kill me in de day or in de night. Give me tese t'ings, and I will vote for you. I swear I will."

"We did not scale the rod because we ... could, we scaled it because we were terrified ... we couldn't."

"The old silence had broken and left us with the sharp pieces."

"It was hard to turn my head, but I did it and looked away."

"Things started to fall apart at home when my brother, Jaja, did not go to communion."

"Morality, as well as the sense of taste, is relative.’"

"I knew that when the tea burned my tongue, it burned Papa's love into me."

"The painting ... represented something lost, something I had never had, would never have."

"She picked up an enterprising snail that was crawling out of the open basket. She threw it back in and muttered, ‘God take power from the devil.’ I wondered if it was the same snail, crawling out, being thrown back in, and then crawling out again. Determined. I wanted to buy the whole basket and set that one snail free."

"That night when I bathed, with a bucket half full of rainwater, I did not scrub my left hand, the hand that Father Amadi had held gently to slide the flower off my finger. I did not heat the water, either, because I was afraid that the heating coil would make the rainwater lose the scent of the sky. I sang as I bathed. There were more earthworms in the bathtub, and I left them alone, watching the water carry them and send them down the drain."

"Rain splashed across the floor of the veranda, even though the sun blazed and I had to narrow my eyes to look out the door of Aunty Ifeoma’s living room. Mama used to tell Jaja and me that God was undecided about what to send, rain or sun. We would sit in our rooms and look out at the raindrops glinting with sunlight, waiting for God to decide."

"Of course God does. Look at what He did to his faithful servant Job, even to His own Son. But have you ever wondered why? Why did He have to murder his own son so we would be saved? Why didn’t he just go ahead and save us?'"

"We will take Jaja to Nsukka first, and then we’ll go to America to visit Aunty Ifeoma,’ I said. ‘We’ll plant new orange trees in Abba when we come back, and Jaja will plant purple hibiscus, too, and I’ll plant ixora so we can suck the juices of the flowers.’ I am laughing. I reach out and place my arm around Mama’s shoulder and she leans toward me and smiles.Above, clouds like dyed cotton wool hang low, so low I feel I can reach out and squeeze the moisture from them. The new rains will come down soon."

"Kambili is right,’ she said. ‘Something from God was happening there.’"

"This cannot go on, nwunye m,’ Aunty Ifeoma said. ‘When a house is on fire, you run out before the roof collapses on your head.’"

"Kambili, Part 2, Section 6"

"It was a joke. Ade Coker was laughing; so was his wife, Yewande. But Papa did not laugh. Jaja and I turned and went back upstairs, silently."

"I know that it’s one of the greatest commandments, never to take the name of the Lord in vain. It’s one of those sins where the punishment gets carried from one generation to the next. Even if you don’t take the name of the Lord in vain yourself, but your great grandfather did, you’ll still be punished for it.”"

"I looked at Jaja and wondered if the dimness in his eyes was shame. I suddenly wished, for him, that he had done the ima mmuo, the initiation into the spirit world. I knew very little about it; women were not supposed to know anything at all, since it was the first step toward the initiation to manhood. But Jaja once told me that he heard that boys were flogged and made to bathe in the presence of a taunting crowd. The only time Papa had talked about the ima mmuo was to say that the Christians who let their sons do it were confused, that they would end up in hellfire."