Elsa Nordström

“There is so much that is still silent between Jaja and me. Perhaps we will talk more with time, or perhaps we never will be able to say it all, to clothe things in words, things that have long been naked.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus

“Amaka says people love priests because they want to compete with God, they simply want God as a rival. But we are not rivals, God and I, we are simply sharing. I no longer wonder if I have a right to love Father Amadi; I simply go ahead an love him. I no longer wonder if the checks I have been writing to the Missionary Fathers of the Blessed Way are bribes to God; I just go ahead and write them. I no longer Wonder if I chose St. Anderw´s church in Unugu as my new church because the priest there is a Blessed Way Missionary as Father Amadi is; I just go.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus

“It was what Aunty Ifeoma did to my cousins, I realized then, setting higher and higher jumps for them in the way she talked to them, in what she expected of them. She did it all the time believing they would scale the rod. And they did. It was different for Jaja and me. We did not scale the rod because we believed we could, we scaled it because we were terrified that we couldn't.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus

“As we drove back to Enugu, I laughed loudly,above Fela's stringent singing. I laughed because Nsukka's untarred roads coat cars with dust in the harmattan and with sticky mud in the rainy season. Because the tarred roads spring potholes like surprise presents and the air smells of hills and history and the sunlight scatters the sand and turns it into gold dust. Because Nsukka could free something deep inside your belly that would rise up to your throat and come out as freedom song. As laughter.(299)”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus