Chinelo Okparanta Quotes & Sayings

Man and wife, the Bible said. It was a nice thought, but only in the limited way that theoretical things often are. — Chinelo Okparanta

I was finding myself forced to acknowledge that the limit of my imagination was by no means the limit of the world. — Chinelo Okparanta

I had become a little like a coffin: I felt a hollowness in me and a rattling at my seams. — Chinelo Okparanta

She smiled just a little, as if to hide how powerful the words made her feel, but Chinasa saw it all the same: the way her face seemed to say that she had gotten the vengeance she sought. The kind of vengeance that turned love into a weapon. Tit for tat. You do me, I do you. — Chinelo Okparanta

Let peace be. Let life be. — Chinelo Okparanta

Shame is the power we give others to wield over us. — Chinelo Okparanta

PAPA'S NAME, UZO, meant "door," or "the way." It was a solid kind of name, strong-like and self-reliant, unlike mine, Ijeoma (which was just a wish: "safe journey"), or Mama's, Adaora (which was just saying that she was the daughter of all, daughter of the community, which was really what all daughters were, when you thought about it). — Chinelo Okparanta

And now she began muttering to herself. "God , who created you, must have known what He did. Enough is enough. — Chinelo Okparanta

Wasn't it the belief, after all, that women looked more beautiful during ovulation - or more gorgeous, if you would? At least there was an upside. — Chinelo Okparanta

I acknowledge to myself that sometimes I am a snail. I move myself by gliding. I contract my muscles and produce a slime of tears. Sometimes you see the tears and sometimes you don't. It is my tears that allow me to glide. — Chinelo Okparanta

...as if in rebellion, certain emotions become amplified at the exact moments when you are expected not to feel them at all. — Chinelo Okparanta

With a man, life is difficult. Without a man, life is even more difficult. — Chinelo Okparanta

Sometimes we get confused about what happiness really means. Sometimes we get confused about what path to take to get to happiness. — Chinelo Okparanta

I suppose it's the way we are, humans that we are. Always finding it easier to make ourselves the victim in someone else's tragedy.

Though it is true, too, that sometimes it is hard to know to whom the tragedy really belongs. — Chinelo Okparanta

This, it seems to me, is the lesson of the Bible: this affirmation of the importance of reflection, and of revision, enough revision to do away with the tired, old, even faulty laws. — Chinelo Okparanta

Happiness is like water,' she says. 'We're always trying to grab onto it, but it's always slipping between our fingers. — Chinelo Okparanta

Maybe love was some combination of friendship and infatuation. A deeply felt affection accompanied by a certain sort of awe. And by gratitude. And by a desire for a lifetime of togetherness. — Chinelo Okparanta

If you set off on a witch-hunt, you will find a witch.
When you find her, she will be dressed like any other person. But to you, her skin will glow in stripes of white and black. You will see her broom, and you will hear her witch-cry, and you will feel the effects of her spells on you.
No matter how unlike a witch she is, there she will be, a witch, before your eyes. — Chinelo Okparanta

The power of science. Sometimes she thought how one day even love might become like a science. Everyone saying exactly the same right words. Everyone reacting the same exact ways. Love feeling and tasting and looking exactly the way some scientists in some laboratory determined that it should. Perhaps a development like that would solve many romantic disputes, maybe even bring down divorce rates to a cool zero percent. — Chinelo Okparanta

If this was the rice that God was putting in my basket...there was no point wishing for soup. — Chinelo Okparanta

Chinasa continued to imagine the girl, a small, veil-wearing child with fear written all over her face, running for dear life. Soon she could see herself as the girl, running and running like the girl. But there was only so far her imagination could take her: She herself had never been a runner. And anyway, how fast did one have to run to outrun a bomb? — Chinelo Okparanta

The absence of any kind of communication from her was not at all like an absence. It was instead a presence: of mind-pain, like a thick, rusted arrow shooting straight into my head, poisoning my mind with something like tetanus, causing my thoughts to go haywire, a spasm here, a spasm there. — Chinelo Okparanta

Suddenly she could see her future in the relationship: a lifetime of feeling like an afterthought. — Chinelo Okparanta

There are no miracles these days. Manna will not fall from the sky. Bombs, yes, enough to pierce our hearts, but manna, no. — Chinelo Okparanta

If theirs was a goal of arriving at versions of themselves that they deemed better - perhaps more valuable - than their current selves, then who could blame them? And yet, they were in fact to be blamed. — Chinelo Okparanta

Also, what if Adam and Ever were merely symbols of companionship? And Eve, different from him, woman instead of man, was simply a tool by which God noted that companionship was something you got from a person outside yourself? What if that's all it was? And why not? — Chinelo Okparanta

Aunty, whatever the matter, just remember that it is the same moon that wanes today that will be full tomorrow. And even the sun, however long it disappears, it always shines again. — Chinelo Okparanta

You'll marry your studies? Marry your books? You already have one degree but you want another. You'll marry your degrees? — Chinelo Okparanta