Americanah Quotes

nothing like the pretty street on the Cosby show

ifem

You mean summer of tutoring

ifem to dike

Ah this thing called power, I was attracted to him even though his teeth like Dracula. I was attracted to his power

Aunty Uju

Oga never gives me big money. He pays all the bills and he wants me to ask for everything I need. Some men are like that

Aunty Uju

You know we live in an ass licking economy. The biggest problem in this country is not corruption. The problem is that there are many qualified people who are not where they are supposed too be because they won't lick anybody's ass., or they don't know which ass to lick or they don't even know how to lick an ass

Aunty Uju

the kind of child who could never stay still and never seemed sad

dike

as if she knew where Philadelphia was, to her America was America

Ifem

1) ceiling its nothing, I'm just curious about him. Nothing is ever going to happen. But I am curries. You Get curious with other girls don't you 2) No he said coldly, I don't

1) ifem 2) obinze

That small money will not help him pay any school fees: But he can buy a little extra something and he will be in a better mood and he won't beat his wife this night

1)Ifem 2) Uju

She was a person who denied that things were the way they wrere/ A person who had to spread the cloak of religion over her own petty desired

63: ifem's mom

Something strange happened, a quickening inside her, a dawning. She realized quite suddenly that she wanted to breathe the same air as obinze

68 ifem

Igbo marry igbo always

Aisha

Not good color

Aisha

He had not been back to Nigeria in years and perhaps he needed the consolation of those online groups, where small observations flared and blazed into attacks, personal insults flung back and forth

Bartholomew

He was jarringly unsuited for and unworthy of Aunty Uju

Bartholomew

You are the absolute lover of my life

Blaine (to ifemelu)

He was sp small, so innocent, and yet there was a precociousness about him, but it was a sunny one; he did not n use dark intentions about the adults in the world

Dike

How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives that we have imagined

Ifem

but it was the commercials that captivated her. she ached for the lives they showed, lives full of bliss where all problems had sparkling solutions in shampoos and cares and packaged food, and in her mind they became the real Americ.

Ifem

she stared at buildings and cars and signboards, all of them matte, disappointingly matte: in the landscaper of her imagination, the mundane things in America were covered in a high shine gloss

Ifem

Boys running around with cassette taps , shyness and awkwardness still undesolved.

Ifem (67)

and so it was the natural order of things, that the gods should match Obinze and Ginika

Ifem (67)

America had subdued her

Ifem about Uju

Hispanic means a slight step above American blacks in the American race ladder. All you need to be is Spanish-Speaking but not from Spain and voila, you're a race called hispanic

Ifem blog

Nigeria became the place where she was supposed to be, the only place she could sink her roots in without the constant urge to tug them out and shake offf the soil

Ifemelu

Obinze, her first love, the only person with whom she had never felt the need to explain herself

Ifemelu

for the ffirst time, ifemelu felt older then Aunty Uju, and she wished jay she child wrest her away, shake her into a self, who would not lay her hopes on the general, shaving and slaving for him, eager to fade his flaws

Ifemelu

A braggart of a man

Ifemelus dad to landlord (59)

The prayers are delusional battles with imaginary traducers yet I insist that you (ifemelu) always wake up early to prey

Ifemelus father

if you have to call somebody mummy to keep your salary then you should have done so

Ifemelus mom (57)

We pay good money for her to go to private school because the public schools here are useless. Marlon says we will move to the suburbs soon so they can go too better schools. otherwise she will start behaving like a black American

Jane

you know this is my 10th year here and I feel as if I'm still settling in

Jane

as though she seemed no longer to see him, Obinze, and instead saw blurred figures, classic types: a wealthy man, a female banker who had been given a target deposit amount =, ab east exchange.____ expected him to cheat and her concern was to minimize the possibilities he might have

Kosi

But back at home as she stood and faced in the mirrors truth, she realized that she had ignored, for too long, the new tightness of her clothes

Narrator (talking about Ifemelu)

And after you register your own company you must find a white man. Find one of your white friends in England. tell everybody he is your general manager,. You will see how doors will open for you because you have an oyinbo General manager. Even chief has some white men that he brings in for show when he needs them. That is how Nigeria works. Im telling you

Nneoma

But who told you we are going to start anything?

Obinze

He watched the other men at the party bow , too, clustering around the chief, jostling to outfought one another when Chief made a joke

Obinze

you look like a black American was his ultimate compliment

Obinze

bIg men and big women did not talk to people they instead talked at people

Obinze about Chief

it was as if she needed the reassurance of their physicality when they were not together

Obinze about Kosi

They fascinated him, the unsubtle cowering od the almost rich in the presence of the rich and the rich in the presense of the very rich; to have money, it seemed, was to be consumed by money

Obinze at chief

there was something immodest about her honesty, it announced itself

Obinze talking about Kosi

Im not a small boy

Obinze to his mother

At the grocery store she never bought what she needed; instead she bought what was on sale and made herself need it

Uju

We have a heat wave the first one of the summer as if heat wave was something ifemelu was supposed to understand

Uju

her words a hale jay tore through their assumptions. she was supposed to want to meet men, to keep her eyes open she was supposed to see the general as an option that could be bettered

Uju

Lungin to pick up his fork when it fell from his hand, serving him more beer

Uju to Bartholomew

put it back she said with the nasal, sliding accent she put on when she spoke to white Americans in the presence of white Americans in the hearing od white Americans. "Pooh Reet Back:, and with the accent emerged a new persona, apologetic, and self abasing. she was overeager wit the cashier

Uju to Dike

this country has no moral compass

bartho

it was as if between then, an old intimacy had quite suddenly lapsed. _________'s impatience that new prickliness in her, made ifem feel that there were things that she should already know but, through some personal failing of hers , did not know.

between Ifem and Uju

"be it fast or slow it doesn't let go, for shake me"

cassette player

I like that girl, Give her to me and I will give you a nice plot of land in Ikeya

chief

I like you I want to take care of you

chief to Uju

In secondary school she had been the bubbly tomboy, very tall and skinny and straightforward, not armed with the mysteriousness of girls

description of Ranyinudo

we are not sheep./. This regime is treating us like sheep and we are starting to behave like sheep.

ginikas father (77)

The conviction lodges in her head that American children learned nothing in elementary school

ifem

if she had been in their Lagos kitchen she would have found a broom and killed it, but she left the American cockroach alone

ifem

He was fired for refusing to call his new boss Mummy. ..came home...complaining about the absurdity of a grown man calling a grown woman mummy because she had decided it was the best way to show her respect

ifem's dad

it was indeed true that because of a male, your stomach could tighten up and refuse to unknot itself, your bodies joints could unhinge, your limbs fail to move to the miusoc and all effortlesss things become leaden

ifem(70)

he made her like herself. with him she was at ease, her skin felt as thought It was the right size

ifem(73)

Blaine needed what she was unable to give and she needed what he was unable to give, and she grieved this, the loss of what could have been

ifemelu

I like my hair the way god made it

ifemelu

she had been meaning to read it for a while now, and imagined she would like it since Blaine did not

ifemelu

she had read many of them because he recommended them, but they were like cotton candy that so easily evaporated from her tongues memory

ifemelu

But his mannered English was a costume, his shield against his insecurities. He was haunted by what he did not have. A post graduate degre and so his affected words became his armor

ifems dad (58

GO AND IRON IT. there is no point in showing the world that things are hard for us

items mom (60)

He spent too much time worrying about what could have been and questioning what should be

obinze

He wondered if she remembered that, he wondered is she remembered how his cousin had sent mix tapes from abroad, and how he made copies for her at the famous electronics shop

obinze

he felt a hollow space between himself and the person he was supposed to be

obinze

im chasing you

obinze (72)

she always chose peace over the truth

obinze about Kosi

make sure you and obinze have a plan

obinzes mom

why did he slap her when she's a widow

people (71)

People often told him how humble he was, but they did not mean real humility, it qas merely that je did not flaunt his membership in the wealthy club, did not exercise the rights it brought -to be rude, inconsiderate, to be greeted rather then to greet-and because so many others liked him exercised those rights, his choices were interpreted as humility. ..to call him humble was to call rudeness normal

talking about the zed