Imbolo Mbue Quotes & Sayings

the problem is not some system. It is us. Each of us. We've got to fix ourselves before we can fix a whole damn country. — Imbolo Mbue

Vince doesn't see this side of you, sir. He sees a father who works at a bank and makes money but I tell him, I say, your parents have other sides you do not see because you are their child. It is only now that I am old that I look at some things that my father did and I understand. — Imbolo Mbue

Home will never go away Home will be here when you come back You may go to bring back fortune You may go to escape misfortune You may even go, just because you want to go But when you come back We hope you'll come back Home will still be here. — Imbolo Mbue

In many different ways it would be an unprecedented plague, a calamity like the one that had befallen the Egyptians in the Old Testament. The only difference between the Egyptians then and the Americans now, Jende reasoned, was that the Egyptians had been cursed by their own wickedness. They had called an abomination upon their land by worshipping idols and enslaving their fellow humans, all so they could live in splendor. They had chosen riches over righteousness, rapaciousness over justice. The Americans had done no such thing. And — Imbolo Mbue

It's the fear that kills us, Leah," Jende said. "Sometimes it happens and it's not even as bad as the fear. That is what I have learned in this life. It is the fear. — Imbolo Mbue

Ah, Neni!" Jende said, laughing. "American women do not use love potions."
"Thats what you think?" Neni said, laughing, yoo. "They use it, oh. They call it lingerie. — Imbolo Mbue

I think the story is our best chance for asylum. We claim persecution based on belonging to a particular social group, We weave a story about how you're afraid of going back home because you're afraid your girlfriend's family wants to kill you so you two don't get married.'
'That sounds like something that would happen in India," Winston said, "No one does anything like that in Cameroon. — Imbolo Mbue

People in this country, always worrying about how to eat, they pay someone good money to tell them: Eat this, don't eat that. If you don't know how to eat, what else can you know how to do in this world? — Imbolo Mbue

America was passing her by. New York City was passing her by. Bridges and billboards bearing smiling people were passing her by. Skyscrapers and brownstones were rushing by. Fast. Too fast. Forever. — Imbolo Mbue

But the Universe gives us different sources of Love to unite us all as One. Who are we to decide what the source of our Love should be at any given time? Love is Love, and at any given point we have everything we need. — Imbolo Mbue

indeed, bad news has a way of slithering into good days and making a mockery of complacent joys. — Imbolo Mbue

Germany was his favorite place to live, he said, because, even as a child, he could tell how much the Germans loved Americans, and it felt great to be loved for his nationality. — Imbolo Mbue

He imagined she had turned her phone off, and he couldn't blame her for silencing the world at such a time - her — Imbolo Mbue

His years on earth had taught him that good things happen to those who honor the kindheartedness of others. — Imbolo Mbue

We cannot go around worrying about what the judge is going to decide. We just have to keep living. — Imbolo Mbue

Who knows what kind of marriage they have? The kinds of marriage people have in this country, Bo, very strange. It's not like back home where a man can do as he sees fit and a woman follows him. Over here it's reversed. Women tell their men what they want and the men do it, because they say happy wife, happy life. This society is funny. — Imbolo Mbue

And yet, despite this portrait of a self assured woman, Cindy seemed to have a near obsession with being where everyone was and doing what everyone was doing. — Imbolo Mbue

He would marry his kind because a man like him needed a woman who understood his heart, shared his values and interests, knew how to give him the things he needed, accepted that his children must be raised in the same manner in which his parents had raised him, and only a woman from his homeland could do that. — Imbolo Mbue

Pregnant women are not supposed to do anything strenuous in their last months, he'd said to her, even though his mother had continued farming till the day she gave birth to each of her five children and had in fact given birth to his youngest brother under a guava tree at their farm behind Mawoh Quarters. — Imbolo Mbue

He looked out the window at the people walking on Amsterdam Avenue. None of them seemed concerned that the day might be one of his last in America. Some of them were laughing. That — Imbolo Mbue

That's exactly the problem! People don't want to open their eyes and see the Truth because the illusion suits them. As long as they're fed whatever lies they want to hear they're happy, because the Truth means nothing to them. Look at my parents - they're struggling under the weight of so many pointless pressures, but if they could ever free themselves from this self-inflicted oppression they would find genuine happiness. Instead, they continue to go down a path of achievements and accomplishments and material success and shit that means nothing because that's what America's all about, and now they're trapped. And they don't get it! — Imbolo Mbue

Just to have somewhere that you can wake up in the morning and go to is a good thing. But what about the future? That is the problem, sir. I could not even marry my wife. I did - " "What do you mean, you couldn't marry? Poor people get married every day." "Yes, they can, sir. Everyone can marry, sir. But not everyone can marry the person that they want. — Imbolo Mbue

She shrugged: just like him to think of all the bad things that could happen. "Someday is not today, — Imbolo Mbue

How dare you mention it in front of him?" "I didn't know he was listening." "You don't need to know anything, Neni. You don't have to know who is listening to what you're saying. You only need to learn how to shut your mouth sometimes. — Imbolo Mbue

loved the poems so much that I decided to try writing one. Feels real good to just write out lines about whatever you're feeling. You should try it sometime." "It sounds very good, sir." "I wrote one for Cindy, but she didn't like it much, so I just write for myself now. — Imbolo Mbue

You know what I'm realizing now?" he said to her. "What?" she asked, looking at him adoringly. "We are sitting in the center of the world." She laughed. "You're so funny." "No, think about it," he said. "Columbus Circle is the center of Manhattan. Manhattan is the center of New York. New York is the center of America, and America is the center of the world. So we are sitting in the center of the world, right? — Imbolo Mbue

while there existed great towns and cities all over the world, there was a certain kind of pleasure, a certain type of adventurous and audacious childhood, that only New York City could offer a child. — Imbolo Mbue

She'd seen them on the news, compassionate Americans talking about how the United States should be more welcoming to people who came in peace. She believed these kindhearted people, like Natasha, would never betray them, and she wanted to tell Jende this, that the people of Judson Memorial Church loved immigrants, that their secret was safe with Natasha. But she also knew it would be futile reasoning with a raging man, so she decided to sit quietly with her head bowed as he unleashed a verbal lashing, as he called her a stupid idiot and a bloody fool. The man who had promised to always take care of her was standing above her vomiting a parade of insults, spewing out venom she never thought he had inside him. For the first time in a long love affair, she was afraid he would beat her. She was almost certain he would beat her. And if he had, she would have known that it was not her Jende who was beating her but a grotesque being created by the sufferings of an American immigrant life. — Imbolo Mbue

Why should a man intentionally live his life with one kind of anxiety followed by another? — Imbolo Mbue

Its regurgitation in newspapers of record and blogs of repute would be another reminder why the American society as a whole could never be call itself highbrow, why its easy availability of of stories on the private lives of others was turning adults, who would otherwise be enriching their minds with worthwhile knowledge, into juveniles who needed the satisfaction of knowing that others were more pathetic than them. — Imbolo Mbue

Rich father, rich mother, rich husband. I'm sure her whole life she's never known what it's like to worry about money." Licking — Imbolo Mbue

Cindy had told her to take as much as she wanted from the storage space in the attic because whatever she didn't take was going to charity, so Neni had cheerfully obliged, taking an old Louis Vuitton carry-on suitcase with a broken zipper, jam-packing it like roasted peanuts in a liquor bottle, and tying it shut with one of her blouses. — Imbolo Mbue

He didn't say it; he had to keep his desperation from bursting through the thin layer of dignity it had been wrapped in throughout the interview. Clark smiled and patted him on the arm. — Imbolo Mbue