A. Igoni Barrett > Quotes

“No one asks to be born, to be black or white or any color in between and yet the identity a person is born into becomes the hardest to explain to the world”
― A. Igoni Barrett, Blackass

“Womanhood comes with its peculiar burdens, among them the constant reminder of a subordinate status whose dominant symptom was uninvited sexual attention from men”
― A. Igoni Barrett, Blackass

“One of the reasons I will never leave Nigeria is because, in this country, anything can happen.”
― A. Igoni Barrett, Blackass

“But love does not mean marriage, a baby, forever. Love means you make me happy until you don't.”
― A. Igoni Barrett

“My say is this: when you live in a worldwide bullring, bullshit is what you'll get. If they say I cannot be my mother's son, then it must be that I'm her daughter.”
― A. Igoni Barrett

“[...]No human being has ever directly seen their own face. It's impossible within nature — the most you can do is glimpse your nose and, for those with full lips, the curve of you upper lip. And so we only see ourselves through external sources, whether as images in mirrors, pixels on the screen, or words on the page, words of love from a mother, words of hate from an ex-lover.
Long before Furo's story became my own, I was already trying to say what I see now, that we are all constructed narratives.”
― A. Igoni Barrett, Blackass

“And he learnt how it felt to be seen as a freak: exposed to wonder, invisible to comprehension. About”
― A. Igoni Barrett, Blackass: A Novel

“It is easier to be than to become.”
― A. Igoni Barrett, Blackass

“He knew that so long as the vestiges of his old self remained with him, his new self would never be safe from ridicule and incomprehension.”
― A. Igoni Barrett, Blackass: A Novel

“A White man in Lagos has no voice louder than the dollar sign branded onto his forehead”
― A. Igoni Barrett, Blackass

“No one asks to be born, to be black or white or any colour in between, and yet the identity a person is born into becomes the hardest to explain to the world.”
― A. Igoni Barrett, Blackass: A Novel

“On this island of existence, the survivor is the man who understands he is trapped.”
― A. Igoni Barrett, Blackass

“Life in Lagos was locked in a constant struggle against empathy. Empathy was too much to ask for, too much to give: it was good only for beggars to exploit in their sob stories aimed at your pocket through your heart. Heart, in Lagos idiom, meant guts, mettle, even recklessness, but rarely compassion.”
― A. Igoni Barrett, Blackass: A Novel

“Lagos was built from blood and sweat, and raw ambition. Abuja was designed as a playground for the rich.”
― A. Igoni Barrett, Blackass

“Dreams can lose their way and turn up on the wrong side of sleep.”
― A. Igoni Barrett

“Who I was as a person was more than what I looked like, but then again, how people saw me was a part of who I was. I”
― A. Igoni Barrett, Blackass: A Novel

“Womanhood comes with its peculiar burdens, among them the constant reminder of a subordinate status whose dominant symptom was uninvited sexual attention from men.”
― A. Igoni Barrett, Blackass: A Novel

“Heart, in Lagos idiom, meant guts, mettle, even recklessness, but rarely compassion. Compassion was a fatal fracturing in hearts bunkered against the city's hardness.”
― A. Igoni Barrett