Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes

How [stories] are told, who tells them, when they’re told, how many stories are told — are really dependent on power.

Power consists to a large extent in deciding what stories will be told.

The one who tells the stories rules.

All too often, white documentary filmmakers are the ones telling the stories of people of color.

I think the biggest thing is voice. Whose voice is it? Who gets to control the narrative?

We learn so much about the world by what we take in through movies and TV and books - we learn who's worthy of having their story told.

Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, to rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.

So much of the world is being brought up on these stories that Hollywood is coming up with and exporting all over. They have so much power and influence, so it's really important that they represent women properly.

There is something to be said about laying bare the vocabulary of the aristocratic measure, right? There's something to be said about allowing the powerless to tell their own story.

Diversity in literature is, in part, about representation - who is telling the stories and who stories are told about.

We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us.

Help shape the stories that people are telling about you.

All we have is the story we tell.

Even for a girl like me, then, there comes a day when she can stop surviving and start living. To survive, you have to look good or talk good. But to end your story well-- here is the truth-- you have to talk yourself out of it.

What is the government? Nothing, unless supported by opinion.

To impress the idea of power on others, they must be made in some way to feel it.

I think the world should be represented on television and for the longest its been limited. Ethnic stories specifically need variety in content period.

You can have your beliefs, but if you're not devout, you can't quite believe that something which grows out of a story, a book or a piece of literature can rise to dominate and make entire nations go to war with each other. I think that's endlessly fascinating, and it's a human construct. It's something that's constructed to occupy the mind and occupy society, and some people would say to control society.

Stories are propaganda, virii that slide past your critical immune system and insert themselves directly into your emotions.

Power, from the standpoint of experience, is merely the relation that exists between the expression of someone's will and the execution of that will by others.

So I decided to make a film about our need to tell stories, to own our stories, to understand them, and to have them heard.

People are submissive to power, and few of them can be influenced by doctrines of righteousness.

When we deny our stories, They define us. When we own our stories, we get to write the ending.

So many stories are determined before they start.

Stories turn anonymous strangers into people who matter.