I admire Toni Morrison, Wole Soyinka, Margaret Atwood, James Baldwin, Elizabeth Strout, D. O. Fagunwa, Sefi Atta, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Colm Toibin and Junot Diaz. It’s a long list that keeps growing. Ayobami Adebayo Read Quote
I established my first writing routine when I was 13. The school year had just ended, and I’d won a stack of books for being the best student in a number of subjects. The pile included several 60-leaved notebooks that I decided to fill with short stories. Ayobami Adebayo Read Quote
There’s this idea that at the lowest rungs of the social ladder in an African family is a childless woman – and the lowest rung of all is a motherless child. Ayobami Adebayo Read Quote
Having children does become tied to a sense of identity and our value as humans. Ayobami Adebayo Read Quote
To be transported into another world is my very favourite part of reading. Ayobami Adebayo Read Quote
I used to think that most published writers, the ones I admired, had a muse, or a special connection to the universe, to nature, or to aliens – something inaccessible to me that caused their prose to flow onto the page, already perfect. Ayobami Adebayo Read Quote
When I started working on ‘Stay With Me,’ I thought it would take two years to complete the novel. Ayobami Adebayo Read Quote
I come from a part of Nigeria where a lot of value is placed on implicit communication. The ‘well brought up’ child is the one who can pick up nonverbal cues from adults and interpret them correctly. Ayobami Adebayo Read Quote
Stay with Me’ started out being very political, largely because I’m a little obsessed with politics. Ayobami Adebayo Read Quote
There’s a Yoruba proverb which roughly translates into, ‘What turns its face to one person has turned its back on the other.’ It’s always made me think about how deeply subjective our experience of the world can be. Ayobami Adebayo Read Quote
