Efuru

Marriage is like picking a parcel from numerous parcels. If you are lucky you pick a valuable one. It does not depend at all on the length of the courtship.

Good girls are rare, as rare as a precious pearl, but one finds the precious pearl if one has patience.

In my youth, there was no stealing. If you stole you were sold as a slave. If your property was stolen, you simply went to one of the idols and prayed him to visit the thief. Before two or three days, you recovered your property. But these Church-goers have spoilt everything. They tell us our gods have no power, so our people continue to steal.

What woman was not susceptible to flattery. Especially if it comes from a man she loves.

Women are complicated human beings. You would complain if I did not say anything. Yet you complain when I do say something. What do you want us men to do?

"Seeing them together is not the important thing"... "The important thing is that nothing has happened since the happy marriage. We are not going to eat happy marriage. Marriage must be fruitful. Of what use is it if it is not fruitful. Of what use it is if your husband licks your body, worships you and buys everything in the market for you and you are not productive?"

...try and weep. Tears wash away sorrows. Your burden is made lighter if you weep. Women weep easily and that is why they do not feel sorrows as keenly as men do.

What is wrong in his marrying a second wife. It is only a bad woman who wants her husband all to herself.

I think God has a way of making mothers forget the pains after the delivery of their babies. If it were not so, I am sure that very few women would want more babies after the first one.

They did not see the reason why Adizua should not marry another woman since, according to them, two man do not live together. To them Efuru was a man since she could not reproduce.