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Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe Quotes

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Famous Chinua Achebe Quotes

“My books have done extremely well, I know. But I don't honestly feel much different from when I began to write. I still think we have a long way to go. I suppose my name means more in Nigeria today than it did five years ago. But I feel the job that literature should do in our community has not even started. It's not yet part of the life of the nation. We are still at the beginning. It's a big beginning, because now we are catching the next generation in the schools. When I was their age, I had nothing to read that had any relevance to my own environment.”

ThinkingKnowsWayFeelsShouldWritingYearsWellsMeanLongStillsBookDifferentDoneBigsAgeTodaySchoolJobsNextLiteratureNamesNationsCommunityMy OwnEnvironmentFiveGenerationsYears AgoHonestlyFive YearsLong WayNext GenerationCatchingRelevanceOur CommunityNigeriaLong Way To Go
Book:Conversations with Chinua Achebe
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“Man is sitting disconsolate on an anthill one morning. God asks him what the matter is and man replies that the soil is too swampy for the cultivation of the yams which God has directed him to grow. God tells him to bring in a blacksmith to dry the soil with his bellows. The contribution of humanity to this creation is so important. God could have made the world perfect if he had wanted. But he made it the way it is. So that there is a constant need for us to discuss and cooperate to make it more habitable, so the soil can yield, you see.”

IfsMenWorldWayNeedsMadeImportantMatterWantedHumanityAsksGrowsPerfectMorningCreationSittingConstantMade ItDryContributionSoilYieldCultivationBlacksmithsYams
Author:Chinua Achebe
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“To the question of writing at all we have sometimes been counselled to forget it, or rather the writing of books. What is required, we are told, is plays and films. Books are out of date! The book is dead, long live television! One question which is not even raised let alone considered is: Who will write the drama and film scripts when the generation that can read and write has been used up?”

WritingLongHas BeensBookSometimesPlayFilmUsedForgetGenerationsTelevisionDramaRaisedScriptsForget ItLive Television
Book:Hopes and impediments: selected essays
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“What really worries me is that those who are in positions of power are not really affected by what we are writing. In the moral dialogue you want to start, you really want to involve the leaders. People ask me: "Why were you so bold as to publish A Man of the People? How did you think the Government was going to take it? You didn't know there was going to be a coup?" I said rather flippantly that nobody was going to read it anyway, so I wasn't likely to be fired from my official position. It's a distressing thought that we cannot engage our leaders in the kind of moral debate we need.”

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Book:Conversations with Chinua Achebe
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“"You sound as if you question the authority and the decision of the Oracle, who said he should die." "I do not. Why should I? But the Oracle did not ask me to carry out its decision." [...] "The Earth cannot punish me for obeying her mesenger," Okonkwo said. "A child's fingers are not scalded by a piece of hot yam which its mother puts into its palm."”

IfsShouldChildrenSaidEarthMotherDiesAsksSoundDecisionPiecesAuthorityHotFingersAsk MeShould IPalmsObeyingOraclesThings Fall Apart OkonkwoYamsOkonkwo
Author:Chinua Achebe
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“"We have heard stories about white men who make the powerful guns and the strong drinks and took slaves away across the seas, but no one thought the stories were true." [said Obierika]"There is no story that is not true," said Uchendu. "The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others. We have albinos among us. Do you not think that they came to our clan by mistake, that they have strayed from their way to a land where everybody is like them?"”

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Author:Chinua Achebe
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“In America there is really very little knowledge of the literature of the rest of the world. Of the literature of Latin America, yes, But that's not all that different in inspiration from that of America, or of Europe. One must go further. You don't even have to go too far in terms of geography - you can start with the Native Americans and listen to their poetry.”

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Book:There Was a Country: A Memoir
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“In the vocabulary of certain radical theorists contradictions are given the status of some deadly disease to which their opponents alone can succumb. But contradictions are the very stuff of life. If there had been a little dash of contradiction among the Gadarene swine some of them might have been saved from drowning.”

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Book:Anthills of the Savannah
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“I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.”

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Author:Chinua Achebe
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