‘I want to write light, funny takes on travel, and to her I’m just an African who should write about struggles.’

"a tourist country because ‘people become props, and countries become performances instead of places’."

"But now I did not want strength to be asked of me. I wanted only to complain about my weakness and then retreat, back into my weakness."

"She thought everyone was born strong and bold like her, and even if they weren’t, she believed they could easily become so. How wrong she was."

"This conversation would be normal at a dinner in Lagos or Abuja, and everyone would talk like Omelogor, bold and baroque declarations topping one another. But here her words bruised the air. She didn’t know how to wear different selves like I did. I heightened my voice in Nigeria, and I swallowed more speech here."

"the clarity of hindsight is bewildering. If only we could see our failings while we are still failing."

"For him, a thing had value simply by being obscure; a man of the people who hated what the people liked. "

People will buy it even if they don’t actually read it; they’ll buy it to show they care, right?’

‘I want to write light, funny takes on travel, and to her I’m just an African who should write about struggles.’

‘If you start thinking, you never stop, so best not to start,’

"She relates with women only through the pain caused them by men."

"‘It's not that Nigeria is poor, it's that it's virulently materialistic,' I said. Money is at the heart of everything, absolutely everything. We don’t admire principle or purpose. Even people who can afford to take ideas and ideals seriously don’t. We don’t live with grandeur.’"

"Perfect righteous American liberals. As long as you board their ideology train, your evilness will be overlooked. Champion an approved cause and you win the right to be cruel."

"Why did Europeans do that? They called their cities beautiful, as if you had no choice but to agree with them. I liked Nigeria well enough but I didn’t expect others to,"

"‘Who is “they”? You think anybody cares enough to invent a conspiracy to keep you away from your history? Go and learn your history. It’s not anybody’s responsibility to teach you.’"

"‘Why are the dirtiest parts real? The people in grungy places live there because they have no choice, not because they want to be real. They would leave if they could.’"