Chika Unigwe > Quotes

“Never give up if your heart and your head tell you are right. People can disappoint you, but your heart and your head will never. Make them your best friends.”
― chika unigwe , On Black Sisters Street

“A parent never apologises, even if he regrets his actions. It is the child who should apologise.”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“Sometimes in life, we have to take a stand. It does not help to sit on the fence, even if we have to hurt the people we love-love. That is what I want you to remember. If I have taught you anything, I want it to be that.”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“You children, you forget that no matter how high the okra tree grows, it's never mightier than the hand that planted it.”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“Obi loved her. But duty was duty. It was as simple as that. She ought to understand. Duty was often stronger than love.”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“No matter the size of your husband's penis, no other woman should know it.”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“But sometimes, it is not the thing that we fear most that crushes us but that which we have forgotten to fear.”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“S is for sir. It's what you called your father if you'd never lived with him. If you did not know where his medication box was. If you did not even know what he was taking medication for. No, sir. Yes, sir. S is for strangers multiplied by five. Ten eyes watching her, sizing her up, maybe wondering what she was doing there. What was she doing here? And all this talk of tradition, which had pushed her mother away in the first place. Roll. Dip. Swallow. She had met her father.”
― Chika Unigwe

“She liked the freedom that came with not being anyone's.”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“Blood is thicker than water, you hear. Ha! Let me tell you, some blood flows thinner. And some water is as thick as sludge.”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“There is no Muslim Nigeria and no Christian Nigeria. There is only one indivisible Nigeria. Kaduna belongs to all Nigerians. No religion endorses violence or gratuitous cruelty. Regrettably, some undesirable elements have incited these ugly clashes and those elements will be fished out and properly punished.”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“Primary Science confused her (if man descended form monkeys, how com the monkey that loved with Mama Boy near the church, and has lived with her for so long as anyone remembered, has not evolved and become human?) and grammar baffled her even more (she could never grasp why it was 'Run Run Ran' but 'See Saw Seen'). When she was caned by her teacher for failing to conjugate the verb Fear (she had said 'Fear Fore Forn'), she decided that school was not for her. There was no logic in what she read, all the teaching seemed designed both to compound her problems and to confound her. When she asked questions, her teachers told her off for being disruptive. How could it be 'Tear Tore Torn'? Change the first letter and the rules changed completely! How was she supposed to remember all of that? 'See Saw Sawn'. It was an unrealistic demand. And on top of that there was the illogicality of mathematics to deal with. Finding solutions to abstract questions that had nothing to do with real life. She did not see how any of this would help her, how it would help anybody really.”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“Her mother sought to see the flaw in everyone, the blemishes, the scars. Mma sought perfection, she saw beauty in everyone. Her mother laughed at the girls who came to see her and Mma was filled with distress, a loathing for her mother who did not seem at all to notice, No. A mother who appeared to delight in her distress.A mother who lived by the rule that men were dispensable. Mma thought them indispensable and was not going to live as her mother lived. Her mother thought she was a fool. 'You fool-fool; men are not worth it.”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“People who are quick to pay compliments, baby-baby, are also quick to withdraw them”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“The Catholic God is stiff. Too stiff. Only understands His people when they pray in a foreign language! He leaves no room to manoeuvre at all. You know what the Catholic fada tells them every Sunday? That his God is a jealous God. He does not like to share with others. Now, isn't the heaven wide enough for as many gods as want to fit in?”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“It is the dog that eats shit but it is the goat that gets rotten teeth.”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“S is for sins. What is a sin? At Catechism, she was taught to repeat, 'Sin is an offence against reason, truth and right conscience.' But she could not tell what sins she was supposed to be atoning for. What were her mother's sins? Mma swallowed all the words she wanted to say and started eating the food she no longer tasted.”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“Determination makes one impervious to pain.”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“If my mother could, she would pick up the shards of my shattered life and cut me with them”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“People who are quick to pay compliments, baby-baby, are also quick to withdraw them. But wisdom comes with age.”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“Shoes. Stranger. Strange. Her mother's shoes. A stranger's shoes. Her mother was a stranger. She was only finding that out now. It was easier to feel compassion for a stranger than for a strange mother. She was finding that out now, too. But compassion for a stranger who was also her mother was new.”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“Life is like a set of false teeth. The world sees what you show it: Clean teeth wey white like Colgate. But you know for inside dat your real teet' don rot finish!”
― Chika Unigwe, On Black Sisters Street

“It is not the thing that we fear the most that crushes us but that which we have failed to fear.”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“Love-love nonsense never does anyone any good”
― Chika Unigwe, Night Dancer

“Meningen zijn als billen, zeggen de Ibo, iedereen heeft ze.”
― Chika Unigwe, De zwarte messias

“Mijnheer, vergeeft u me, maar vandaag wil ik niet spreken.”
― Chika Unigwe, De zwarte messias