Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes

A man with a talent does what is expected of him, makes his way, constructs, is an engineer, a composer, a builder of bridges. It's the natural order of things that he construct objects outside himself and his family. The woman who does so is aberrant. We have to expiate for this cursed talent someone handed out to us, by mistake, in the black mystery of genetics.

Often, women as little girls are sent off on a track for them to live a perfect life and be a perfect woman. Not for boys, who can be themselves with their mood and their temper.

Because if you say men and women are the same and if male behaviour is the norm, and women are always expected to act like men, we will never be as good at being men as men are.

Many differences are rooted in biology and reinforced through culture, so it's important to acknowledge that. Because if you say men and women are the same and if male behaviour is the norm, and women are always expected to act like men, we will never be as good at being men as men are.

I have really good female friends. I've never bought the whole men-and-women-can't-be-friends thing. I think that's sort of nonsense.

There are certain expectations placed on writers if other people have put a value on their gender. I'm aware of the hundreds of tiny differences that happen when people are seeing your gender before they see something else.

People try to make women a very specific thing so that we like them.

I am scared of stepping out of the house, because of what people will think of me. In our society, men and women are looked at differently anyway, and that's even truer if you are an actress.

A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards.

To think that all in me of which my father would have felt proper pride had I been a man, is deeply mortifying to him because I am a woman.

To say anything about women and men without marking oneself as either feminist or anti-feminist, male-basher or apologist for men seems as impossible for a woman as trying to get dressed in the morning without inviting interpretations of her character. Sitting at the conference table musing on these matters, I felt sad to think that we women didn't have the freedom to be unmarked that the men sitting next to us had. Some days you just want to get dressed and go about your business. But if you're a woman, you can't, because there is no unmarked woman.

They [men and women] have both been, and men especially, have been told that how they naturally are is bad.

I don't think men try to make women be like them, but I think women try to make men be like them, a lot.

If you're a girl and you don't fit the very specific vision of what a girl should be, which is always from a man's perspective, then you're a little bit at a loss.

I can tell you that my experience has been that the gentlemen are more likely to come and ask for the order, ask for the raise, ask for the promotion, and that the women are less likely to do so.

My mom always had a softer spot for boys, as a lot of Irish women do. If you were a girl, you'd have to sing or wear a pretty dress. But boys could just sit there and be brilliant for sitting there and being boys. It makes you that little bit more forward. Pushy. I was singing, always.

I think that all men and women both, particularly women, hold back on parts of ourselves because they don't fit into the traditional workplace model.

My mother always wanted a boy. My father never did.

I feel like all guys are the same.

We needed to be assertive as women in those days - assertive and aggressive - and the degree to which we had to be that way depended on where you were. I had to be.

Men and women are different: we have different tendencies, skills, and behaviors. This should be accepted and fostered, not demonized. Because the end result is simply more effeminate men and more masculine women. Who wants that?

It was really unusual that the crews on 'Spooks' were a real mix of men and women, and you'd struggle to see many women with parts that weren't cliched back in the late '90s.

I don't believe that we - and this holds true for both genders - have as many choices as we seem to like to think.

We're really taught to be followers from a very young age - men lead and women follow.

Men and women are different, and they can never read each other's mind.