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We have evolved. But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much.

Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice.

"Is love this misguided need to have you beside me most of the time? Is love this safety I feel in our silences? Is it this belonging, this completeness?"

I often make the mistake of thinking that something that is obvious to me is just as obvious to everyone else.

"There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other things easily forgivable."

"This is our world, although the people who drew this map decided to put their own land on top of ours. There is no top or bottom, you see."

"The truth has become an insult."

She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself.

With him, she was at ease: her skin felt as though it was her right size. She told him how she very much wanted God to exist but feared He did not, how she worried that she should know what she wanted to do with her life but did not even know what she wanted to study at university. It seemed so natural, to talk to him about odd things. She had never done that before. The trust, so sudden and yet so complete, and the intimacy, frightened her.

If you’re telling a non-black person about something racist that happened to you, make sure you are not bitter. Don’t complain. Be forgiving. If possible, make it funny. Most of all, do not be angry. Black people are not supposed to be angry about racism. Otherwise you get no sympathy. This applies only for white liberals, by the way. Don’t even bother telling a white conservative about anything racist that happened to you. Because the conservative will tell you that YOU are the real racist and your mouth will hang open in confusion.

She liked that [Obinze] wore their relationship so boldly, like a brightly colored shirt. Sometimes she worried that she was too happy. She would sink into moodiness, and snap at Obinze, or be distant. And her joy would become a restless thing, flapping its wings inside her, as though looking for an opening to fly away.

"Then she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing him. Need gave him power without his trying; need was the choicelessness she often felt around him."