1) "Princeton, in the summer, smelled of nothing, and although Ifemelu liked the tranquil greenness of the many trees, the clean streets and stately homes, the delicately overpriced shops, and the quiet, abiding air of earned grace, it was this, the lack of smell, that most appealed to her, perhaps because the other American cities she knew well had all smelled distinctly. Philadelphia had the musty scent of history. New Haven smelled of neglect. Baltimore smelled of brine, and Brooklyn of sun-warmed garbage. But Princeton had no smell. She liked taking deep breaths here. She liked watching the locals who drove with pointed courtesy and parked their latest-model cars outside the organic grocery store on Nassau Street or outside the sushi restaurants or outside the ice cream shop that had fifty different flavors including red pepper or outside the post office where effusive staff bounded out to greet them at the entrance. She liked the campus, grave with knowledge, the Gothic buildings with their vine-laced walls, and the way everything transformed, in the half-light of night, into a ghostly scene. She liked, most of all, that in this place of affluent ease, she could pretend to be someone else, someone specially admitted into a hallowed American club, someone adorned with certainty."
2) "He had been uncomfortable, with her overdone fussing, the deference that seeped subtly from her pores. He was, in her eyes, no longer The Zed from secondary school, and the stories of his wealth made her assume he had changed more than he possibly could have. People often told him how humble he was, but they did not mean real humility, it was merely that he did not flaunt his membership in the wealthy club, did not exercise the rights it brought—to be rude, to be inconsiderate, to be greeted rather than to greet—and because so many others like him exercised those rights, his choices were interpreted as humility. He did not boast, either, or speak about the things he owned, which made people assume he owned much more than he did. Even his closest friend, Okwudiba, often told him how humble he was, and it irked him slightly, because he wished Okwudiba would see that to call him humble was to make rudeness normal. Besides, humility had always seemed to him a specious thing, invented for the comfort of others; you were praised for humility by people because you did not make them feel any more lacking than they already did. It was honesty he valued; he had always wished himself to be truly honest, and always feared that he was not."
3) "Alexa, flush with red wine, her eyes red below her scarlet hair, changed the subject. 'Blunkett must be sensible and make sure this country remains a refuge. People who have survived frightful wars must absolutely be allowed in!' She turned to Obinze. 'Don't you agree?'
'Yes,' he said, and felt alienation run through him like a shiver.
Alexa, and the other guests, and perhaps even Georgina, all understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls, but they would not understand the need to escape from the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness. They would not understand why people like him, who were raised well fed and watered but mired in dissatisfaction, conditioned from birth to look towards somewhere else, eternally convinced that real lives happened in that somewhere else, were now resolved to do dangerous things, illegal things, so as to leave, none of them starving, or raped, or from burned villages, but merely hungry for choice and certainty."
4) "The other flats she liked were too expensive. Even though pipes poked out under the kitchen sink and the toilet was lopsided and the bathroom tiles shoddily laid, this was the best she could afford. She liked the airiness of the living room, with its large windows, and the narrow flight of stairs that led to a tiny verandah charmed her, but, most of all, it was in Ikoyi. And she wanted to live in Ikoyi. Growing up, Ikoyi had reeked of gentility, a faraway gentility that she could not touch: the people who lived in Ikoyi had faces free of pimples and drivers designated 'the children's driver.' The first day she saw the flat, she stood on the verandah and looked across at the compound next door, a grand colonial house, now yellowed from decay, the grounds swallowed in foliage, grass and shrubs climbing atop one another. On the roof of the house, a part of which had collapsed and sunk in, she saw a movement, a turquoise splash of feathers. It was a peacock. The estate agent told her that an army officer had lived there during General Abacha's regime; now the house was tied up in court. And she imagined the people who had lived there fifteen years ago while she, in a little flat on the crowded mainland, longed for their spacious, serene lives."
5) "'What are you reading these days?' she asked. 'I'm sure you've read every American novel ever published.'
'I've been reading a lot more nonfiction, history and biographies. About everything, not just America.'
'What, you fell out of love?'
'I realized I could buy America, and it lost its shine. When all I had was my passion for America, they didn't give me a visa, but with my new bank account, getting a visa was very easy. I've visited a few times. I was looking into buying a property in Miami.'
She felt a pang; he had visited America and she had not known.
'So what did you finally make of your dream country?'
'I remember when you first went to Manhattan and you wrote me and said that 'It's wonderful but it's not heaven.' I thought of that when I took my first cab ride in Manhattan.'
She remembered writing that, too, not long before she stopped contacting him, before she pushed him behind many walls. 'The best thing about America is that it gives you space. I like that. I like that you buy into the dream, it's a lie but you buy into it and that's all that matters.'"
