One day, I will look up and all the people I know will be dead or abroad.

Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I'm Jamaican or I'm Ghanaian. America doesn't care.

There are many different ways to be poor in the world but increasingly there seems to be one single way to be rich.

Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice.

Sometimes she worried that she was too happy. . . And her joy would become a restless thing, flapping its wings inside her, as though looking for an opening to fly away.

Ifemelu thought about the expression "sweet girl." Sweet girl meant that, for a long time, Don had molded Ranyinudo into a malleable shape, or that she had allowed him to think he had.

A book did not qualify as literature unless it had polysyllabic words and incomprehensible passages.

Ma? I think you have the spirit of husband-repelling. You are too hard, ma, you will not find a husband. But my pastor can destroy that spirit.

femelu could not understand this, her mother’s ability to tell herself stories about her reality that did not even resemble her reality

They never said “I don’t know.” They said, instead, “I’m not sure, ” which did not give any information but still suggested the possibility of knowledge.

...she thought of him as a person who did not have a normal spine, but had instead, a firm reed of goodness.

When you are in a room with Kurtis, whether its one or a hundred he is the only person that matters.

If God thought it necessary to offer rewards for love, your God must be immoral.

Prayer indeed is good but while calling on the gods a man should himself lend a hand.

The net of the sleeper catches fish.

We all recognize that in recent decades, many important achievements have helped create a cleaner, healthier environment, yet our national needs in environmental health are not being fully met.

Power corrupts, but lack of power corrupts absolutely.

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Men do not knowingly drink for the effect alcohol produces on the body. What they drink for is the brain-effect; and if it must come through the body, so much the worse for the body.

Honestly, if you're just going to be the love interest then at least let it be a really good movie. Not every role is going to be Hamlet, I know that.