Ayobami Adebayo

Ayobami Adebayo (born January 29, 1988) is a Nigerian writer .Her 2017 debut novel, Stay With Me, won the 9mobile Prize for Literature and the Prix Les Afriques. She was awarded The Future Awards Africa Prize for Arts and Culture in 2017.

Quotes

 * I wanted to write about extended family systems. You have people you can fall back on, and it’s good. But what if you don’t fit into what is expected of you? If you’re a man, there’s support. If you’re a woman, like Yejide, there’s the expectation that you marry into a family and after a couple of years you have children, and you have a measure of power. I wanted to look at what would happen if you could choose to be what you’re supposed to be, and how the community, in trying to help you become what you think you should be, turns on you.
 * On how she portrayed extended family in her novel Stay With Me in “Great Expectations: An Interview with Ayobami Adebayo” in The Paris Review (2017 Aug 8)


 * I wanted to look at the subtle ways that Nigerians interacted with the Nigerian state. One of the ways we survive darkness—and there’s a lot of darkness in this book—is to find reasons to laugh. Laughter in those kinds of situations becomes essential. It’s not a luxury. It’s not just something you do because you feel like laughing. It’s been one of the ways I’ve coped myself. I wanted to bring that to this book because it would be miserable if there was no humor…
 * On injecting humor as a coping mechanism in her writings in “Great Expectations: An Interview with Ayobami Adebayo” in The Paris Review (2017 Aug 8)


 * There is a strong view in Nigeria, as in many other cultures, that a marriage is not complete without children. I don’t agree; I’m wary of the idea that people have to have some particular functionality in order to be full members of society. I think it’s a very dangerous idea. Humans are humans and they are worthy of respect…
 * On her views of marriage and children in “Ayòbámi Adébáyò: ‘We should decide for ourselves what happiness looks like’” in The Guardian (2017 Feb 26)


 * I am interested in the idea that people should be able to define their own happiness. It’s not just about fertility; we are often told that we need this or that to be happy. We need to be thin, rich or whatever. But maybe we should decide for ourselves what happiness looks like.
 * On how people should pursue their own happiness in “Ayòbámi Adébáyò: ‘We should decide for ourselves what happiness looks like’” in The Guardian (2017 Feb 26)


 * “If the burden is too much and stays too long, even love bends, cracks, comes close to breaking and sometimes does break. But when it's in a thousand pieces around your feet, that doesn't mean it's no longer love.”
 * “Sometimes I think we have children because we want to leave behind someone who can explain who we were to the world when we are gone.”
 * “So love is like a test, but in what sense? To what end? Who was carrying out the test? But I think I did believe that love had immense power to unearth all that was good in us, refine us and reveal to us the better versions of ourselves.”
 * “I understand how a word others use every day can become something whispered in the dark to soothe a wound that just won't heal. I remember thinking I would never hear it spoken without unravelling a little, wondering if I would ever get to say it in the light. So I recognise the gift in this simple pronouncement, the promise of a beginning in this one word.”
 * “OK, we'll tell her you dug the grave." It's the truth - stretch, but still true. Besides, what would be left of love without truth stretched beyond its limits, without those better versions of ourselves that we present as the only ones that exist?”
 * “Before you call the snail a weakling, tie your house to your back and carry it around for a week”
 * “It would take a while for me to realise that each of my children had given me as much as they took. My memories of them, bittersweet and constant, were as powerful as a physical presence. And because of that, as a bus bore me into the heart of a city I did not know, while my last child was dying in Lagos and the country was unraveling, I was not afraid because I was not alone.”
 * “I loved Yejide from the very first moment. No doubt about that. But there are things even love can’t do. Before I got married, I believed love could do anything. I learned soon enough that it couldn’t bear the weight of four years without children. If the burden is too much and stays too long, even love bends, cracks, comes close to breaking and sometimes does break. But even when it’s in a thousand pieces around your feet, that doesn’t mean it’s no longer love.”
 * “The reasons why we do the things we do will not always be the ones that others will remember. Sometimes”
 * “I had expected them to talk about my childlessness. I was armed with millions of smiles. Apologetic smiles, pity-me smiles, I-look-unto-God smiles - name all the fake smiles needed to get through an afternoon with a group of people who claim to want the best for you while poking at your open sore with a stick - and I had them ready. I was ready to listen to them tell me I must do something about my situation. I expected to hear about a new pastor I could visit; a new mountain where I could go to pray; or an old herbalist in a remote village or town whom I could consult. I was armed with smiles for my lips, an appropriate sheen of tears for my eyes and sniffles for my nose. I was prepared to lock up my hairdressing salon throughout the coming week and go in search of a miracle with my mother-in-law in tow. What I was not expecting was another smiling woman in the room, a yellow woman with a blood-red mouth who grinned like a new bride.”
 * “what would be left of love without truth stretched beyond its limits”
 * “But even then, I could trap those thoughts and keep them caged in a corner of my mind, in a place where they could not spread their wings and take over my life.”
 * “I was overwhelmed with the urge to fill every silence with words. Silence to me was a void in the universe that could suck us all in. It was my assignment to block this deadly void with words and save the world.”
 * “But the biggest lies are often the ones we tell ourselves. I bit my tongue because I did not want to ask questions. I did not ask questions because I did not want to know the answers. It was convenient to believe my husband was trustworthy; sometimes faith is easier than doubt.”
 * “Already, I was coming undone, like a hastily tied scarf coming loose, on the ground before the owner is aware of it.”
 * “I was armed with millions of smiles. Apologetic smiles, pity-me smiles, I-look-unto-God smiles—name all the fake smiles needed to get through an afternoon with a group of people who claim to want the best for you while poking at your open sore with a stick—and I had them ready.”
 * “I would learn later that Akin could keep himself neatly folded in while he drew out other people. He was the kind of person that many claimed as a dear friend. Many of those people did not even know him, but they never knew they did not know him.”
 * “there is no god like a mother”
 * “Even the tongue and the teeth cannot cohabit without fighting”
 * “The reasons why we do the things we do will not always be the ones others will remember. Sometimes I think we have children because we want to leave behind someone who can explain who we were to the world.”
 * “A mother must be vigilant. She must be able and willing to wake up ten times during the night to feed her baby. After her intermittent vigil, she must see everything clearly the next morning so that she can notice any changes in her baby. A mother is not permitted to have blurry vision. She must notice if her baby’s wail is too loud or too low. She must know if the child’s temperature has risen or fallen. A mother must not miss any signs.”
 * “If the burden is too much and stays too long, even love bends, cracks, comes close to breaking and sometimes does break”
 * “Didn’t think it was possible for the world to change so suddenly. I was aware of other people moving up and down the corridor: I heard heels clicking, people speaking, felt some bodies push past mine. But I felt so alone, as though within the space of time it had taken Yejide to say, “They have taken Olamide to the mortuary” I had been transported to a planet with no human life.”
 * “There is nothing stopping a beautiful girl from facing her books”
 * “The road stretches before us, shrouded in a darkness transitioning into dawn as it leads me back to you.”
 * “Di we ever really know what we will do in any situation until the situation presents itself?”
 * “If the burden is too much and stays too long, even love bends, cracks, comes close to breaking and sometimes does break. But even when it’s in a thousand pieces around your feet, that doesn’t mean it’s no longer love.”
 * “My mother had become a obsession for me, a religion, and the very thought of referring to another woman as Mother seems sacrilegious, a betrayal of the woman who had given up her life for me to live.”

A Spell of Good Things(2023)

 * Time was unforgiving, it didn’t stop, not even to give people a chance to scrape themselves off the floor if they’d been shattered.
 * “Now hear me well—what is not yours is not yours o, even if you marry the person that has that thing. If it is not yours, it is not yours o.”
 * “He stared back at her, unconcerned. She had always marvelled at his calm assurance that everything good in his life would either remain the same or get better. He took good fortune for granted. As though it were impossible that it would abide only for a spell. She had never been able to shake the sense that life was war, a series of battles with the occasional spell of good things.”


 * Maybe she was one of those people for whom satisfaction lay only in the future, forever slightly out of reach.