I Read to be Consoled | 13 Best Quotes from Adichie’s Pen Festival Lecture + Gorgeous Photos

Chimamanda Adichie’s lecture at the Pen World Voices Festival came and went, leaving a trail of thoughtful quotes and lovely photos.

I hope you find inspiration in these quotes and enjoy all the fun photos that comes right after.

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1. “It’s important to me that African stories be told by African people.”

2. “To choose to write is to reject silence.”

3. “Every novel has a worldview. Every novel believes something.”

4. “The ability to admit to ignorance is a wonderful thing.”

5. “It is censorship to tell half a story. It is censorship to neglect context.”

6. “The fear of causing offense, the fear of ruffling the careful layers of comfort, becomes a fetish.”

7. “I have often been told that I cannot speak on certain issues because I am young, and female, or, to use the disparaging Nigerian speak, because I am a ‘small girl’ … I have also been told that I should not speak because I am a fiction writer … But I am as much a citizen as I am a writer,”

8. “There are many reasons why I read. I read to be consoled.”

9. “I would not want to live if I were not able to have the consolation that stories give me…and for this reason I will stand and I will speak for the right of everyone, everyone, to tell his or her story.”

10. “How are we ever going to really understand one another if we’re not being told stories in a way that is full and fully done?”

11. “I’ve actually found that the older I get, the less interested I am in how the West sees Africa, and the more interested I am in how Africa sees itself.”

12. I have many problems in my life, but I don’t think that identity is one of them.”

13. “I think of myself as a writer, I think of myself as a dreamer…and I think what’s interesting … is that when you’re sitting there in front of your computer, hoping to write a good sentence, you really don’t remember that you’re black and African, you know, you just think, I want to write a damn good sentence.”

[All images by PEN American Center via Flickr.)