Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• To choose to write is to reject silence.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Writing, Silence, Rejects

  "Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: 'Fear of causing offence becomes a fetish'" by Nicole Lee, www.theguardian.com. May 11, 2015.

• You can't write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Inspiring, Writing, Mind

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2008). “Half of a Yellow Sun”, p.210, Anchor

• I think human beings exist in a social world. I write realistic fiction, and so it isn't that surprising that the social realities of their existence would be part of the story.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Writing, Reality, Thinking

  "Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Continental Divides". Interview with Joseph Klarl, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 14, 2013.

• I think my first general rule is that most of my experiences are not that interesting. It's usually other people's experiences. It's not that entirely conscious. Somebody tells me a story or, you know, repeats an anecdote that somebody else told them and I just feel like I have to write it down so I don't forget - that means for me, something made it fiction-worthy. Interesting things never happen to me, so maybe two or three times when they do, I have to use them, so I write them down.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Mean, Writing, Thinking

• I had people read it early on and, you know, well-meaning people said to me, you should take out the blogs. I didn't get much positive feedback. Only because most of these people were protective of me - it was sort of like a "tone it down, make it easier to swallow" kind of thing. And I just thought if I do that then it's not the book I want to write.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Book, Writing, People

• Richard exhaled. It was like somebody sprinkling pepper on his wound: Thousands of Biafrans were dead, and this man wanted to know if there was anything new about one dead white man. Richard would write about this, the rule of Western journalism: One hundred dead black people equal to one dead white person.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Writing, Men, White Man

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

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Writing, People, Creative

• I didn't want to be apologetic about my love story, and I think to be willing to write about love you have to be willing to sound foolish. I wanted to write about foolish and goofy love and different relationships. I wanted to write about interracial relationships in a way that does not pretend as if race does not exist.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Love You, Writing, Thinking

  "The Rumpus Interview With Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie" by Kima Jones, therumpus.net. June 17, 2014.

• 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.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Writing, Mean, Details

  "Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Continental Divides". Interview with Joseph Klarl, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 14, 2013.

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

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  "Madonna's not our saviour" by Stephen Moss, www.theguardian.com. June 7, 2007.

• I don't believe that art and politics or social issues must be separated. In writing about marriage, for example, money can be a big factor, and money is linked to earning, and earning is influenced by politics.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Art, Believe, Writing

  "Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Continental Divides". Interview with Joseph Klarl, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 14, 2013.

• My grandfather died in the war, my family went through the war, and it affected my parents in really profound ways. I've always wanted to write about that period - in some ways to digest it for myself, something that defined me but that I didn't go through.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  War, Writing, Profound

  "Half of a Yellow Sun". Interview with Rina Palta, www.motherjones.com. October 24, 2006.

• If the government doesn't fund education, which they often don't, students are going to stay home and not go to school. It affects them directly. But I'm really not interested in writing explicitly about that. I'm really interested in human beings, and in love, and in family. Somehow, politics comes in.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  School, Home, Writing

  "Half of a Yellow Sun". Interview with Rina Palta, www.motherjones.com. October 24, 2006.

• When the writing is going well, I'm obsessive. I don't shower, I don't take phone calls, I hardly respond to text messages, I don't do email. I take breaks only to read, and usually I read poetry. When it's not going well, I just lie in bed and eat chocolate.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Lying, Writing, Chocolate

  "Meet Beyoncé's Favorite Novelist" by Keziah Weir, www.elle.com. February 15, 2014.

• I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Real, Writing, Stories

  "Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Facts are stranger than fiction". www.theguardian.com. April 19, 2013.

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