Chinelo Okparanta

"Sometimes we get confused about what happiness really means. Sometimes we get confused about what path to take to get to happiness."

"The fact that the Bible says [homosexuality is] bad is all the reason you need. Besides, how can people be fruitful and multiply if they carry on in that way?"

"I was finding myself forced to acknowledge that the limit of my imagination was by no means the limit of the world."

"I knew the truth all the same: that she was doing it for her own good…she was doing it because she was overwhelmed: by life, by the war, by the thought of having to try and make it without Papa."

"At the window, only one glass pane remained in its frame, and on it, cracks in an almost circular pattern, as if a spider web had been stretched across its surface. She went up to that pane, touched it, stroked its fissures with her fingers, stared accusingly at it."

"There are no miracles these days. Manna will not fall from the sky. Bombs, yes, enough to pierce our hearts, but manna, no."