Book life in 2016.

“To know what a person has done, and to know who a person is, are very different things”



“No matter if you tried to do what was best. No matter if your innermost self whispers, ‘I am not as you say!’—how other people think of you determines who you are.”


“ People claim to know you through the things you’ve done, and not by sitting down and listening to you speak for yourself.”

“The greatest privilege of childhood is to live totally in the present.”


“The happiness of children is based on their ignorance of what their parents are really thinking.”


“What's important is not who YOU love but WHO loves you.”

“You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me?” Aunty Ifeka said. “Your life belongs to you and you alone.”


“This was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles.”

“You can't write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be.”

“Why do I love him?...I don't think love has a reason...I think love comes first and then the reasons follow.”

“It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.”

“I'm starting to realize that people lack good mirrors. It's so hard for anyone to show us how we look, & so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.”


“Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will”

“Push yourself. Don’t settle. Wear those stripy legs with pride. And if you insist on settling down with some ridiculous bloke, make sure some of this is squirreled away somewhere. Knowing you still have possibilities is a luxury. Knowing I might have given them to you has alleviated something for me.”


“You can only actually help someone who wants to be helped.”


“I hadn’t realized that music could unlock things in you, could transport you to somewhere even the composer hadn’t predicted. It left an imprint in the air around you, as if you carried its remnants with you when you went.”