Okey Ndibe > Quotes

“Remember this: a story that must be told never forgives silence. Speech is the mouth's debt to a story.”
― Okey Ndibe, Arrows of Rain

“A story that must be told never forgives silence.”
― Okey Ndibe, Never Look an American in the Eye: A Memoir of Flying Turtles, Colonial Ghosts, and the Making of a Nigerian American

“Americans can't stand any stranger looking them in the face. They take it as an insult. It's something they don't forgive. And every American carries a gun. If they catch you, a stranger, looking them in the face, they will shoot.”
― Okey Ndibe, Never Look an American in the Eye: A Memoir of Flying Turtles, Colonial Ghosts, and the Making of a Nigerian American

“In a society where people are obsessed with personal space, dogs have come to serve as welcome, neo-human mediators of loneliness and solitude.”
― Okey Ndibe, Never Look an American in the Eye: A Memoir of Flying Turtles, Colonial Ghosts, and the Making of a Nigerian American

“You wrote words with your hand, but your mind wiped me away.”
― Okey Ndibe, Foreign Gods, Inc.

“To know is sometimes good, but to have the wisdom to accept what you cannot know is better.”
― Okey Ndibe, Arrows of Rain

“wash off the journey”
― Okey Ndibe, Never Look an American in the Eye: A Memoir of Flying Turtles, Colonial Ghosts, and the Making of a Nigerian American

“What I know are simple truths. I know that the fabric of memory is reinforced by stories, rent by silences. I know that power dreads memory. I know that memory outlasts power's viciousness. I know . . . that a voiceless man is as good as dead.”
― Okey Ndibe, Arrows of Rain

“a story that must be told never forgives silence”
― Okey Ndibe, Arrows of Rain

“in a postmodern world, even gods and sacred objects must travel or lose their vitality; any deity that remained stuck in its place and original purpose would soon become moribund.”
― Okey Ndibe, Foreign Gods, Inc.

“that we die, our very humanity slayed, whenever we choose to remain silent in the face of tyranny.”
― Okey Ndibe, Never Look an American in the Eye: A Memoir of Flying Turtles, Colonial Ghosts, and the Making of a Nigerian American

“A wise man sleeps with his eyes and keeps his ears awake.”
― Okey Ndibe, Arrows of Rain

“Winter, I wrote, was akin to living inside a refrigerator.”
― Okey Ndibe, Never Look an American in the Eye: A Memoir of Flying Turtles, Colonial Ghosts, and the Making of a Nigerian American

“May we not die premature deaths; instead, may our troubles be limited to pangs of hunger. A man with life will find food to put in the stomach. If death doesn’t kill the penis, it soon eats bearded meat.”
― Okey Ndibe, Foreign Gods, Inc.

“The white man knows many things,” the other whispered back, “but he doesn’t know how to tell a good lie.”
― Okey Ndibe, Foreign Gods, Inc.

“The death that kills a puppy first blinds him. The headstrong who won’t listen will finally obey the summons of the death mat. The housefly who has nobody to advise it follows the corpse into the grave.”
― Okey Ndibe, Arrows of Rain

“A story that must be told never forgives silence. Speech is the mouth’s debt to a story”
― Okey Ndibe, Arrows of Rain

“A true expert, instead, was one who understood a subject well enough to make its most intricate concepts accessible to a novice. The”
― Okey Ndibe, Never Look an American in the Eye: A Memoir of Flying Turtles, Colonial Ghosts, and the Making of a Nigerian American

“Polycarp used to dazzle youngsters with tales of heroic worker strikes. He also relished telling stories about a man called Karl Marx, a name he pronounced as Kalu Mazi.”
― Okey Ndibe, Foreign Gods, Inc.