Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I think it's possible to have been a happy child, as I was, and still question and push back with regard to societal conventions. ”

There has always been a strange dissonance between the public and the private in Nigeria. ”

The problem with looking in the mirror is that you never know how you will feel about what you see. Sometimes, when my hormones are out of sync, I have no interest in the mirror, and if I do look I think everything is all wrong. Other times, I am quite pleased with what I see. ”

Nigerian politics has been, since the military dictatorships, largely non-ideological. Rather than a battle of ideas, it is about who can pump in the most money and buy the most access. ”

There is, for me, as a black woman, as an African woman, a sense of possibility in America that I don't feel when I'm in Europe. ”

The best novels are those that are important without being like medicine; they have something to say, are expansive and intelligent but never forget to be entertaining and to have character and emotion at their centre. ”

I was tired of everyone saying that when you write about race in America, it has to be nuanced, it has to be subtle, it has to be this and that. ”

Some men feel threatened by the idea of feminism. This comes, I think, from the insecurity triggered by how boys are brought up, how their sense of self-worth is diminished if they are not 'naturally' in charge as men. ”

Lasting love has to be built on mutual regard and respect. It is about seeing the other person. I am very interested in relationships and, when I watch couples, sometimes I can sense a blindness has set in. They have stopped seeing each other. It is not easy to see another person. ”

Successful fiction does not need to be validated by 'real life'; I cringe whenever a writer is asked how much of a novel is 'real'. ”