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

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.

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.

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

Great God of wonders

I think I speak for everyone, " he says, "when I say you have earned the title of Dauntless".

The day you lose your sense of wonder is the day you grow old.

In my opinion and experience, imperialists of all nations and races will tell us anything to keep us fighting. For them.

Globalisation makes it clear that social responsibility is required not only of governments, but of companies and individuals. All sources must interact in order to reach the MDGs.

I can't stand to see red in my profit-or-loss column. I'm Taurus the bull, so I react to red. If I see it, I sell my stocks quickly.

The President hears a hundred voices telling him that he is the greatest man in the world. He must listen carefully indeed to hear the one voice that tells him his is not.

Fear is sweat, but terror is addictive.

We have a situation where we have a lawmaker here in California who says that if you spank the child, you spank them, you're going to go to jail for a year or you're going to pay a $1,000 fine.

I felt dull and flat and full of shattered visions.