Akwaeke Emezi > Quotes

“Some people can't see softness without wanting to hurt it”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“Understand this if you understand nothing: it is a powerful thing to be seen”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater

“I'm not what anyone thinks I am. I never was. I didn't have the mouth to put it into words, to say what was wrong, to change the things I felt I needed to change. And every day it was difficult, walking around and knowing that people saw me one way, knowing that they were wrong, so completely wrong, that the real me was invisible to them. It didn't even exist to them. So: If nobody sees you, are you still there?”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“Sometimes, you recognize truth because it destroys you for a bit.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater

“The first step to seeing is seeing that there are things you do not see.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Pet

“Somewhere, you see, in the river of time, I am already alive.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“If nobody sees you, are you still there?”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“Ikept the book for the title, for how it was spelled. Beautyful. I had no idea why that spelling was chosen, but I liked it because it kept the beauty intact. It wasn’t swallowed, killed off with an i to make a whole new word. It was solid; it was still there, so much of it that it couldn’t fit into a new word, so much fullness. You got a better sense of exactly what was causing that fullness. Beauty. I wanted to be as whole as that word.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“Alone is a feeling you can get used to, and it's hard to believe in a better alternative.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“The world in my head has been far more real than the one outside—maybe that’s the exact definition of madness, come to think of it.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater

“The truth does not change whether it is seen or unseen, it whispered in her mind. A thing which is happening happens whether you look at it or not. And yes, maybe it is easier not to look. Maybe it is easier to say because you do not see it, it is not happening. Maybe you can pull the stone out of the pool and put the moon back together.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Pet

“What does a monster look like? Jam asked.

Her mother focused on her, cupping her cheek in a chalky hand. "Monsters don't look like anything, doux-doux. That's the whole point. That's the whole problem.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Pet

“How much of my mother's life I missed because I was a child”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“Love and guilt sometimes taste the same, you know.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“He didn't belong to you...You keep talking as if he belonged to you, just because you were his mother, but he didn't.

He didn't belong to anybody but himself.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“The first madness was that we were born, that they stuffed a god into a bag of skin.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater

“Fresh starts were good; that separateness was where you could feel yourself, where you could learn who you were apart from everyone else.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“Truth does not care if it feels true or not. It is true nonetheless" -Pet”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Pet

“I often wonder if I died in the best possible way - in the arms of the one who loved me the most, wearing a skin that was true.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“It was interesting for us to watch, how he didn’t even have to go anywhere in order to leave her.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater

“His grief was chasing him from room to room, begging him to spend some time alone with it.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“Maybe we were all pretending to be fine because the world gave us no other option.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“But I've learned that you can't force forever on the wrong people. They belong exactly where they are, giving exactly what they want to. I don't ask for anything more. I figure I shouldn't have to.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater

“Good and innocent, they not the same thing; they don't wear the same face.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Pet

“Also, the problem is, when you think you’ve been without monsters for so long, sometimes you forget what they look like, what they sound like, no matter how much remembering your education urges you to do. It’s not the same when the monsters are gone. You’re only remembering shadows of them, stories that seem to be limited to the pages or screens you read them from. Flat and dull things. So, yes, people forget. But forgetting is dangerous. Forgetting is how the monsters come back.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Pet

“Life was like being dragged through concrete in circles, wet and setting concrete that dried with each rotation of my unwilling body. As a child, I was light. It didn’t matter too much; I slid through it, and maybe it even felt like a game, like I was just playing in mud, like nothing about that slipperiness would ever change, not really. But then I got bigger and it started drying on me and eventually I turned into an uneven block, chipping and sparking on the hard ground, tearing off into painful chunks. I wanted to stay empty, like the eagle in the proverb, left to perch, my bones filled with air pockets, but heaviness found me and I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t shake it off; I couldn’t transform it, evaporate or melt it. It was distinct from me, but it hooked itself into my body like a parasite. I couldn’t figure out if something was wrong with me or if this was just my life—if this was just how people felt, like concrete was dragging their flesh off their bones.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“You are crying,” she said. It was only then that Osita noticed the tears slipping into his ears. It was evening and the light was leaving. “It’s raining,” he told her, slurring his words.
She laughed. “It’s not raining.”
“It’s raining inside me,” he said and a wave if darkness took over.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“And that’s something I’ve learned in the years since, that there are so many different types of love, so many ways someone can stay committed to you, stay in your life even if y’all aren’t together, you know? And none of these ways are more important than the other.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty

“He was so beautiful that he made the air around him dull”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“We understood what was necessary -humans often fail at listening, as if their stubbornness will convince the truth to change, as if they have that kind of power. They do, however, understand forceful things, cruelties--they obey those.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater