Chinua Achebe Quotes - Page 12

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• [Would] a sensible man spit out the juicy morsel that good fortune put in his mouth?

  Chinua Achebe

  Men, Juicy, Mouths

  4 Copy quote

• Poetry and slave trading cannot be bedfellows. That's where I stand.

  Chinua Achebe

  Slave, Trading, Bedfellows

  4 Copy quote

• I have found that I work best when I am at home in Nigeria. But one learns to work in other places.

  Chinua Achebe

  Home, Found, Nigeria

  7 Copy quote

• This is not pessimism but rather casting a cold eye on things. It is only one man's story, and I think that things will go better, but difficulties exist and nothing is served by hiding them under a poetic veil or under a lyricism of the past. I am against slogans.

  Chinua Achebe

  Eye, Past, Men

  Chinua Achebe, Bernth Lindfors (1997). “Conversations with Chinua Achebe”, p.8, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  4 Copy quote

• Men had taken greater blows: that was what made a man a man. For did they not say that a man is like a funeral ram which must take whatever beating comes to it without opening its mouth; that the silent tremor of pain down its body alone must tell of its suffering?

  Chinua Achebe

  Pain, Men, Grieving

  4 Copy quote

• I have so many ideas; there are so many things that need to be done, so many possibilities, you know; one is terribly excited, but at the same time, you're almost confused, because you don't know where to begin.

  Chinua Achebe

  Confused, Ideas, Done

  Chinua Achebe, Bernth Lindfors (1997). “Conversations with Chinua Achebe”, p.52, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  4 Copy quote

• The emperor would prefer the poet to keep away from politics, the emperor's domain, so that he can manage things the way he likes.

  Chinua Achebe

  Way, Likes, Poet

  Interview with Bradford Morrow, www.conjunctions.com.

  4 Copy quote

• A man who lived on the banks of the Niger should not wash his hands with spittle.

  Chinua Achebe

  Men, Hands, Should

  Chinua Achebe (2011). “No Longer at Ease”, p.15, Anchor

  7 Copy quote

• I am not an early-morning person; I don't like to get out of bed, and so I don't begin writing at five A.M., though some people, I hear, do. I write once my day has started. And I can work late into the night, also.

  Chinua Achebe

  Morning, Writing, Night

  4 Copy quote

• When we hear a house has fallen do we ask if the ceiling fell with it?

  Chinua Achebe

  Thought Provoking, House, Ceilings

  Chinua Achebe (1986). “Arrow of God”, p.18, Heinemann

  4 Copy quote

• Generally, I don't attempt to produce a certain number of words a day. The discipline is to work whether you are producing a lot or not, because the day you produce a lot is not necessarily the day you do your best work. So it's trying to do it as regularly as you can without making it - without imposing too rigid a timetable on your self. That would be my ideal.

  Chinua Achebe

  Self, Numbers, Discipline

  4 Copy quote

• It always surprised him when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair.

  Chinua Achebe

  Despair, Load

  Chinua Achebe (1996). “Things Fall Apart”, p.18, Heinemann

  4 Copy quote

• When I was in England, I had seen advertisements about typing agencies; I had learned that if you really want to make a good impression, you should have your manuscript well typed.

  Chinua Achebe

  Agency, Should Have, Want

  4 Copy quote

• What has happened to Africa is very severe. We are talking about the collapse of this and the collapse of that, of good government, of the economy particularly. And this has hit education badly. The news you get from the universities in Nigeria is often appalling. I don't think a lot of it gets out. There is the obsession with cults and all kinds of dreadful things going on and all this is taking its toll and it is not surprising that quality of students and graduates who come out is not good. It will not be surprising if this shows in the quality of work they do.

  Chinua Achebe

  Thinking, Government, Talking

  4 Copy quote

• When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands. In one of my essays, I remember the kind of things that fascinated me. Weird things, even, about a wizard who lived in Africa and went to China to find a lamp... Fascinating to me because they were about things remote, and almost ethereal.

  Chinua Achebe

  School, Land, People

  7 Copy quote

• In my definition I am a protest writer, with restraint.

  Chinua Achebe

  Definitions, Protest, Restraint

  Chinua Achebe (2012). “There Was a Country: A Memoir”, p.46, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• I think Africa is slowly learning - and painfully - that importance of insisting on responsible leadership. It will come eventually, and we may be impatient and rightly so, because it is not coming fast enough. But that is the way to go.

  Chinua Achebe

  Thinking, May, Way

  Source: www.ehlingmedia.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think the language that we use in dealing with one another is very important. And even if I am called upon to bring out some money to support a regime, and I am entitled to say I do not like what that regime does and obviously I am not going to put money there - you cannot really say this is wrong or this is unreasonable.

  Chinua Achebe

  Thinking, Support, Important

  4 Copy quote

• If I say look unless you change your leaders I will not give you any aid, you are likely to have people who say: "To the hell with you, we will struggle on the way but we will do it". Therefore what I am saying is - and I do not whether it is coming through clearly - there has to be a lot of care exercised by the people who are in the position to give or withhold assistance: if they start throwing their weight around, using extreme language, seeming to order other nations to do their bidding, then there will not be a good result, it will not be done.

  Chinua Achebe

  Struggle, Order, Giving

  Source: www.ehlingmedia.com

  4 Copy quote

• If the economy of a country collapses completely and the hospitals are no longer able to function as hospitals, it will be very difficult to tell every doctor to stay home to work without drugs, to work without equipment. You might tell some to stay but there a lot of young people who are at the beginning of their careers who would be very difficult to persuade.

  Chinua Achebe

  Country, Home, Doctors

  Source: www.ehlingmedia.com

  4 Copy quote

• The people you see in Nigeria today have always lived as neighbors in the same space for as long as we can remember. So it's a matter of settling down, lowering the rhetoric, the level of hostility in the rhetoric is too high.

  Chinua Achebe

  Space, Long, People

  4 Copy quote

• Some people flinch when you talk about art in the context of the needs of society thinking you are introducing something far too common for a discussion of art. Why should art have a purpose and a use? Art shouldn't be concerned with purpose and reason and need, they say. These are improper. But from the very beginning, it seems to me, stories have indeed been meant to be enjoyed, to appeal to that part of us which enjoys good form and good shape and good sound.

  Chinua Achebe

  Art, Thinking, People

  Chinua Achebe (2012). “There Was a Country: A Memoir”, p.49, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• Good leaders, competent leaders must see it as primary task to create friendliness. This something within the scope of most people. Now artists, like writers and sort of course have an added option of using their scale and talent with this in view. It is their business to create an environment in which our people will prosper and be happy.

  Chinua Achebe

  Artist, Views, People

  Source: www.ehlingmedia.com

  4 Copy quote

• Living fire begets cold, impotent ash.

  Chinua Achebe

  Fire, Okonkwo, Ashes

  Chinua Achebe (1996). “Things Fall Apart”, p.109, Heinemann

  18 Copy quote

• If you ask me, Now, is it your best book? I would say, I don't really know. I wouldn't even want to say. And I'd even go on and say, I don't even think so.

  Chinua Achebe

  Book, Thinking, Goes On

  4 Copy quote

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