Second-Class Citizen

Quotes

1. (Chapter 1, Page 15)

2. 

   Then the thought suddenly struck her. Yes, she would go to school.

3. 

   One might think on this evidence that Africans treated their children badly. But to Adah’s people and to Adah herself, this was not so at all; it was the custom. Children, especially girls, were taught to be very useful very early in life, and this had its advantages. For instance, Adah learned very early to be responsible for herself. Nobody was interested in her for her own sake, only in the money she would fetch, and the housework she could do and Adah, happy at being given this opportunity of survival, did not waste time thinking about its rights or wrongs. She had to survive.”

4. 

   So, sorry as she was for making a fool out of an old doctor, this was just one of the cases where honesty would not have been the best policy.

5. 

   Not like those of their children who later got caught up in the entangled web of industrialisation. Adah’s Ma had no experience of having to keep up mortgage payments: she never knew what it was to have a family car, or worry about its innards; she had no worries about pollution, the population explosion or race. Was it surprising, therefore, that she was happy, being unaware of the so-called joys of civilisation and all its pitfalls?”

6. 

   She felt eight when she was being directed by her dream, for a younger child would not be capable of so many mischiefs. Thinking back on it all now that she was grown up, she was sorry for her parents. But it was their own fault; they should not have had her in the first place, and that would have saved a lot of people a lot of headaches.”

7. 

   (Chapter 2, Page 19)

8. 

   Adah could not stop thinking about her discovery that the whites were just as fallible as everyone else. There were bad whites and good whites, just as there were bad blacks and good blacks! Why then did they claim to be superior?

9. 

   Marriage is lovely when it works, but if it does not, should one condemn oneself ? I stopped feeling guilty for being me.

10. 

    At home in Nigeria, all a mother had to do for a baby was wash and feed him and, if he was fidgety, strap him onto her back and carry on with her work while that baby slept.

11. 

    You must know, my dear young lady, that in Lagos you may be a million publicity officers for the Americans; you may be earning a million pounds a day; you may have hundreds of servants: you may be living like an elite, but the day you land in England, you are a second-class citizen.”

12. 

    She had gambled with marriage, just like most people, but she had gambled unluckily and had lost.

13. 

    She did not delude herself into expecting Francis to love her. He had never been taught how to love, but had an arresting way of looking pleased at Adah's achievements.

14. 

    Did she not feel totally fulfilled when she had completed the manuscript, just as if it were another baby she had had?

15. 

    They were going to get the room they were asking for. Pa Noble was too old for Sue.

16. 

    London, having killed Adah's congregational God, created instead a personal God who loomed large and really alive.

17. 

    Hunger drove Francis to work as a clerical officer in the post office. Adah's hopes rose. This might save the marriage after all.

18. 

    Her children were going to be different. They were all going to be black, they were going to enjoy being black, be proud of being black, a black of a different breed.

19. 

    The concept of whiteness could cover a multitude of sins.

20. 

    The leaves were still on the trees but were becoming dry, perched like birds ready to fly off.

21. 

    Dreams soon assume substance

22. 

    This old friend of Adah's paid for the taxi that took her home from Camden Town because he thought she was still with her husband.

23. 

    Typical Igbo psychology; men never do wrong, only the women; they have to beg for forgiveness, because they are bought, paid for and must remain like that, silent, obedient slaves.

24. 

    She, who only a few months previously would have accepted nothing but the best, had by now been conditioned to expect inferior things. She was now learning to suspect anything beautiful and pure. Those things were for the whites, not the blacks.

25. 

    One thing she did know was the greatest book on human psychology is the Bible. If you were lazy and did not wish to work, or if you had failed to make your way in society, you could always say, 'My kingdom is not of this world.' If you were a jet-set woman who believed in sleeping around, VD or no VD, you could always say Mary Magdalene had no husband, but didn't she wash the feet of Our Lord? Wasn't she the first person to see our risen saviour? If, in the other hand, you believed in the inferiority of the blacks, you could always say, 'Slaves, obey your masters.' It is a mysterious book, one of the greatest of all books, if not the greatest. Hasn't it got all the answers?

That’s all the quotes.

25 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more