Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person.

But even in her laughter there was something missing. She never seemed to be truly happy; she just seemed to be passing time while she waited for something else. She was tired of just existing; she wanted to live.

I was oppressed with a sense of vague discontent and dissatisfaction with my own life, which was passing so quickly and uninterestingly, and I kept thinking it would be a good thing if I could tear my heart out of my breast, that heart which had grown so weary of life.

The human being is constantly torn from calm and peace of simple existence by two things; wanting what you don't have, or disliking what you have.

The truth is, wherever you choose to be, it's the wrong place.

What was wrong with me? I had a decent life. I was healthy. I wasn't starving or maimed by a land mine or orphaned. Yet somehow, it wasn't enough. I had a hole in me, and everything I took for granted slipped through it like sand. I felt like I had swallowed yeast, like whatever evil was festering inside me had doubled in size.

I do want more. I am not content with being happy. I was not made for it. It is not my destiny. My destiny is the opposite.

I'd never been content in America.

Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.

What I do is spend too much time thinking. Most of the time I just walk around annoyed. Would I describe myself as relatively happy, I suppose, but society gets to me. And the people that have mastered life seem to not care, and then they die, and then the grenade goes off.

I wasn't unhappy, but I was a little like: 'Is this it? Really?' I was thirsty.

I am weary of happiness, both as a word and as a concept.

Unrest of spirit is a mark of life.

The discontented man finds no easy chair.

It doesn't matter what I'm doing - I wish it was something else. If I'm producing, I wish I was directing. If I'm directing, I wish I was doing almost anything else!

So much of my intention with songs is to voice a continual dissatisfaction, or at least to claw my way out of it.

I'm never content, and I don't know if that's a curse or a good thing.

It's a blessing and a curse, 'cause I'm never satisfied, so I continually want to outdo myself. But still, I'm never happy.

A few years ago it dawned on me that everybody past a certain age ... pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives. They don't want to be who they are any more. They want out. This list includes Thurston Howell the Third, Ann-Margret, the cat members of Rent, Václav Havel, space shuttle astronauts and Snuffleupagus. It's universal.

My first reaction was that the adult world was fake and liars and basically worked for money and power. I didn't want to live in that world, so I spent a year, aged 17 to 18, trying to kill myself. I didn't want to live in a world of violence and injustice.

Something unappeased, unappeasable, is within me.

I am so fed up and joyless that not only have I nothing to fill my soul, I cannot even conceive of anything that could possibly satisfy it - alas, not even the bliss of heaven.

Countries like ours are full of people who have all of the material comforts they desire, yet lead lives of quiet (and at times noisy) desperation, understanding nothing but the fact that there is a hole inside them and that however much food and drink they pour into it, however many motorcars and television sets they stuff it with, however many well-balanced children and loyal friends they parade around the edges of it. . . it aches!

Take me home," Snow White said. "Take me home instantly. If there is anything worse than being home, it is being out.