"She felt eight when she was being directed by her dream, for a younger child would not be capable of so many mischiefs. Thinking back on it all now that she was grown up, she was sorry for her parents. But it was their own fault; they should not have had her in the first place, and that would have saved a lot of people a lot of headaches.”"

"(Narrator, p. 9)"

"(Narrator, p. 175)"

"Then the thought suddenly struck her. Yes, she would go to school."

"As long as you live and walk this earth, you must make a mark”"

"(Chapter 1, Page 7)"

"They feared us, feared our advanced weaponry, feared what we could do to their devilish practices and rituals, and so they tried to eliminate us”"

"Most days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl. Everyone would be pleased to see me coming.”"

"They will destroy every last semblance of your humanity, and you cannot fight it, you cannot change it. Because from now on, they own you”"

"It births such a ravenous beast . . . that not even the risk of failure is enough to sate its cravings”"

"Make me normal. Make me whole. Make me like them. Make me worthy of life”"

"So, sorry as she was for making a fool out of an old doctor, this was just one of the cases where honesty would not have been the best policy."

"Hunger drove Francis to work as a clerical officer in the post office. Adah's hopes rose. This might save the marriage after all."

"(Narrator, p. 93)"

"Not like those of their children who later got caught up in the entangled web of industrialisation. Adah’s Ma had no experience of having to keep up mortgage payments: she never knew what it was to have a family car, or worry about its innards; she had no worries about pollution, the population explosion or race. Was it surprising, therefore, that she was happy, being unaware of the so-called joys of civilisation and all its pitfalls?”"

"(Narrator, p. 162)"

"“I am only half of what I really am. I cannot afford to be whole”"

"Treat something like a monster, and it will certainly learn to become a monster”"

"They were going to get the room they were asking for. Pa Noble was too old for Sue."

"This old friend of Adah's paid for the taxi that took her home from Camden Town because he thought she was still with her husband."

"Did she not feel totally fulfilled when she had completed the manuscript, just as if it were another baby she had had?"

"(Narrator, p. 166)"

"Adah could not stop thinking about her discovery that the whites were just as fallible as everyone else. There were bad whites and good whites, just as there were bad blacks and good blacks! Why, then did they claim to be superior?"

"(Chapter Eleven)"

"Her children were going to be different. They were all going to be black, they were going to enjoy being black, be proud of being black, a black of a different breed."

"You must know, my dear young lady, that in Lagos you may be a million publicity officers for the Americans; you may be earning a million pounds a day; you may have hundreds of servants: you may be living like an elite, but the day you land in England, you are a second-class citizen.”"

"Save [Little Bee] and there’s a whole world of them behind her. A whole swarm of Little Bees, coming here to feed.”"

"I closed my eyes and listened to the hum of the fluorescent lights, the buzzing of the fax machines, and the fluid chatter of the editorial girls on their phones to fashion houses. It all seemed suddenly insane, like wearing a little green bikini to an African war."

"The boy’s father had dark skin, darker even than my own, and the boy’s mother was a white woman. They were holding hands and smiling at their boy, whose skin was light brown. It was the color of the man and the woman joined in happiness. It was such a good color that tears came into my eyes."

"(Chapter Six)"

"I’ve spent two years denying what happened on that beach. Ignoring it, letting it fester. That’s what Andrew did too, and it killed him in the end. I’m not going to let it kill me and Charlie"

"The gasoline flowing through the pump made a high-pitched sound, as if the screaming of my family was still dissolved in it. The nozzle of the gasoline hose went right inside the fuel tank of Sarah’s car, so that the transfer of the fluid was hidden."

"(Narrator, p. 141)"

"(Chapter Seven)"

"(Chapter nine)"

"(Chapter Eight )"

"So, I realized—life had finally broken through. How silly it looked now, my careful set of defenses against nature: my brazen magazine, my handsome husband, my Maginot line of motherhood and affairs. The world, the real world, had found a way through. It had sat down on my sofa and it would not be denied any longer."

"“I just think this is not our affair and so…”"

"Then I listened to my sister’s bones being broken one by one. That is how my sister died. […] When the men and the dogs were finished with my sister, the only parts of her that they threw into the sea were the parts that could not be eaten."

"I smiled and watched Charlie running away with the children , with his head down and his happy arms spinning like propellers, and I cried with joy when the children all began to play together in the sparkling foam of the waves that broke between worlds at the point. It was beautiful […] and that is a word I do not need to explain to you, because now we are all speaking the same language"

"(Chapter Four)"

"Yu nivver notice dey interview rooms didn’t have no windows? Me swear to yu, dat man’s ooman mus kept her legs cross for da last ten years, de way he took me up on me offer. An it wasn’t jus on de one day, mind. It took de man four interviews fore he was certain me papers was in order.”"

"(Chapter Three)"

"(Narrator, p. 53)"

"(Chapter Five)"

"How calm my eyes were, since that day on the beach in Africa. When there has been a loss so fundamental I suppose that to lose just one more thing—a finger, perhaps, or a husband—is of absolutely no consequence at all."

"(Narrator, p. 151)"

"(Chapter 1, Page 1)"

"They’d sooner destroy you for fear of what they do not understand”"

"They told us we must be disciplined to overcome our fears. This is the discipline I learned: whenever I go into a new place, I work out how I would kill myself there. In case the men come suddenly, I make sure I am ready."