White writers can be blunt about race and get all activist because their anger isn’t threatening

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.

… there is no permanence or guarantee in this life.

I'd rather be on the ground than underTo feel the heavy rain and the thunder.

There are really places in your heart that you don't know exist until you love a child.

The book: an umbrella against ignorance

I'm no mechanic but I can change my oil and I know what to do when I get a flat tire and I can hot-wire it in an emergency.

The Madden Curse has really taken on a life of its own. People just love talking about it, and it is what it is, but I look at it as a challenge

The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

The thing about fate is, are you the master of your fate, or are the stars?

It was believed by the purveyors of male fantasies in films that nurses were a popular male fantasy because they were caring, and they were women who could legitimately touch men all over.

Or is it the mind state that's ill, creating crime rates to fill the new prisons the build