Half Of A Yellow Sun Quotes
"If you want to understand a country’s soul, read its fiction."
"Education is a priority! How can we resist exploitation if we don't have the tools to understand exploitation?"
"The only authentic identity for the African is the tribe."
"We will build our own school! We will raise money and build our own school!"
"The capabilities of bacteria are quite extraordinary."
"If he is not looking at you hard enough, there is something wrong with his eyes."
"The artificiality of her parents’ relationship always seemed harder, more shaming, when she was here in Kano."
"The intensity had not abated after two years, nor had her awe at his self-assured eccentricities and his fierce moralities."
"Into my heart on air that kills / From yon far country blows: / What are those blue remembered hills, / What spires, what farms are those?"
"That is the land of lost content / I see it shining plain, / The happy highways where I went / And cannot come again."
"I can't forget that I'm bereft / Of all the pleasant sights they see, / Which the Piper also promised me."
"For he led us, he said, to a joyous land, / Joining the town and just at hand, / Where waters gushed and fruit trees grew, / And flowers put forth a fairer hue, / And everything was strange and new."
"If you were far from home, they told you the dead person was very sick."
"The sunlight that came in through the window seemed too bright for late afternoon, too full of an ominous radiance."
"This is the end of corruption! This is what we have needed to happen since that general strike."
"You are Igbo man! Don’t deny it! Simply identify yourself!"
"I am only pregnant, Sister, I am not sick, oh."
"You can only talk to the person who wants to talk to you."
"I want to have a brilliant child, nkem, a brilliant child."
"I do love the art. It was horrible of him to accuse me of disrespect."
"I hear you did not suck your mother’s breasts."
"Let’s have a child, nkem. A little girl just like you."
"Is this how you cut ugu? Alu melu! Make them smaller!"
"It’s possible to love something and still condescend to it."
"I assure all foreigners that their rights will continue to be respected."
"If we learn irrigation technology, we can feed this country easily."
"I wish so he would float away if he raised one leg."
"His dislike for Udodi—loud, drunken, duplicity dripping from his pores—had only deepened in the past years."
"The angles of his shoulder bones were visible through his white shirt."
"Richard was not sure who walked toward whom first."
"Kainene touching his arms and face with a tenderness that made Richard look away."
"I did not know how bad chicken shit smelled until I slept in it for three days."
"I dressed as a Fulani nomad and walked through the smaller villages."
"It was only then I knew that I was alive and I would survive."
"I came back to Umunnachi to find Adaobi wearing black."
"Igbo soldiers and Northern soldiers can never live in the same barracks after this."
"After all, Udodi spoke better Hausa than he spoke Igbo, and look how they slaughtered him."
"Nigeria was a collection of fragments held in a fragile clasp."
"The conversations no longer ended in reassuring laughter."
"We have confirmed reports that up to five hundred Igbo people have been killed in Maiduguri."
"Olanna realized, then, that this was not just another demonstration by religious students."
"Mohammed was dragging her, pulling her, his grasp hurting her arm."
"The notion of the recent killings being the product of 'age-old' hatred is therefore misleading."
"You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me? Your life belongs to you and you alone."
"It was so fast, the descent of the kite and the gliding away with the chick grasped in hooked claws, that Olanna thought she might have imagined it."
"I also think that you should forgive Odenigbo. It's not for him, you know. It's for you."
"Don't see it as forgiving him. See it as allowing yourself to be happy. What will you do with the misery you have chosen?"
"You think I need to go to church more often?"
"I think love comes first and then the reasons follow. When I am with him, I feel that I don’t need anything else."
"He is very careful now, since he realized that I am no longer afraid."
"Everything changed when he was inside her. She raised her hips, moving with him, matching his thrusts."
"It was only days ago, but even the memory of Olanna’s flat was hazy."
"Life would be gossamer, all his days merging into one long sheer sheet of nothingness."
"Starvation made the people of the world take notice and sparked protests and demonstrations."
"Starvation propelled aid organizations to sneak-fly food into Biafra at night."
"The tranquil tone he used to confront their new world, their changed circumstances, bewildered her."
"She was pleased Mrs. Muokelu was not with her, so she would not have to share it."
"She would stop and hurl stones and words up at them."
"She had to matter. She would no longer exist limply, waiting to die."
"She felt nothing. She was floating away from inside herself."
"The very sense of being inconsequential that pushed her from extreme fear to extreme fury."
"It was the very sense of being inconsequential that pushed her from extreme fear to extreme fury."
"How can we recapture Enugu when the vandals have occupied it?"
"A man who escaped from Udi told me. And they choose the best houses and force people’s wives and daughters to spread their legs for them and cook for them."
"Ugwu saw them, more and more each day, new faces on the streets, at the public borehole, in the market."
"We are the last. All the schools in Umuahia have become refugee camps or army training camps."
"They have brought bamboo beds and cooking utensils already. And the new Director for Mobilization is coming next week."
"I said your hometown is too small! They will not be interested in staying there."
"I’m going to sell my brown shoes to Mama Onitsha, and I will make a new pretty dress for Baby."
"He is a Big Man. Ihukwara moto? Did you see that car?"
"Let’s go, she said to the soldier. Then she bent and whispered to Ugwu, 'I am coming. If they look for me, please say I went to get something from Ngozi’s house.'"
"She was impressed. When he saw her standing by her house and watching him teach, he would raise his voice and pronounce his words more carefully."
"I met the major some weeks ago; he gave me a lift when I went to Orlu, but I did not think he would even remember me."
"I worked with the freedom fighters in Ethiopia and before that I flew in relief to the Warsaw ghetto."
"No," he said. He turned to Odenigbo. "Did you hear what our shore batteries did to the vandals in the Onitsha sector?"
"But perhaps it is the whole point of being alive? That life is a state of death denial?"
"We should build a bunker," he said, and went to the door. "Yes, we certainly need a bunker here."
"Don’t you see those banana trees? All the air raids we have had, we went there, and nothing happened to us. We don’t need a bunker. Banana trees absorb bullets and bombs."
"What does an army deserter know about bunkers?"
"No, mba, move it farther down. Yes, let’s hold it there."
"Onye ga-enwe mmeri?" "Biafra ga-enwe mmeri, igba!"
"Since when have saboteurs had it written on their faces?"
"Please, mah, I am to wait until you check that everything is complete."
"Thank you," Olanna said. "Greet your master."
"I am a stupid woman. I am the one who believed all his lies."
"There is nothing special about me," Olanna said.
"God is fighting for Nigeria," Alice said. "God always fights for the side that has more arms."
"God is on our side!" Olanna surprised herself by how sharp she sounded.
"Ambrose is pretending to be a pastor to avoid the army."
"I am not really from Enugu." Alice drew up her knees. "I am from Asaba."
"If I see that man again, ezi okwu m, I will kill him with my own hands."
"My husband knows how to do, and with something like this." Olanna raised a clenched fist.
"Somebody at the directorate gave it to me. It’s quite old. But it’s good to have just in case."
"I think you should go and see Ezeka. Ask him to help move you somewhere else."
"You can serve Biafra better if you work somewhere else where you can use your brain and talent," she said.
"I’m serving Biafra well enough at the Manpower Directorate."
"Mummy Ola! Bingo can see spirits. When he barks at night it means he sees spirits."
"There are no such things as spirits, Baby," Olanna said.
"The child has kwashiorkor," Olanna said quietly.
"Kwashiorkor," Mama Adanna repeated, and looked at Olanna with frightened eyes.