Chinua Achebe Quotes - Page 8

Quotes about:

• There is no story that is not true, [...] The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.

  Chinua Achebe

  People, Stories, World

  Chinua Achebe (1996). “Things Fall Apart”, p.99, Heinemann

  18 Copy quote

• The Novelist As Teacher”: “I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their past – with all its imperfections – was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God’s behalf delivered them.

  Chinua Achebe

  Teacher, Past, Night

  Chinua Achebe (2009). “Things Fall Apart: Authoritative Text, Contexts and Criticism”, W W Norton & Company Incorporated

  4 Copy quote

• I do not think that there is any time in our history when things were perfect. I do not expect such times in the near future either. But I think every generation has to examine what needs to be done, what belongs to its peace and proceed. And so what needs to be done will change with time depending on the conditions, whatever the conditions happen to be. And they will not be the same for generation after generation.

  Chinua Achebe

  Thinking, Perfect, Needs

  Source: www.ehlingmedia.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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 Books are out of date!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?

  Chinua Achebe

  Drama, Book, Writing

  Chinua Achebe (2012). “Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays”, p.83, Anchor

  4 Copy quote

• At the most one could say that his chi or ... personal god was good. But the Ibo people have a proverb that when a man says yes his chi says yes also. Okonkwo said yes very strongly; so his chi agreed.

  Chinua Achebe

  Men, Okonkwo, People

  Chinua Achebe (1996). “Things Fall Apart”, p.19, Heinemann

  8 Copy quote

• My parents were early converts to Christianity in my part of Nigeria. They were not just converts; my father was an evangelist, a religious teacher. He and my mother traveled for thirty-five years to different parts of Igboland, spreading the gospel.

  Chinua Achebe

  Mother, Teacher, Religious

  4 Copy quote

• Those who are talking sharia in Nigeria are really just politicians exploiting what they think is available. But if it should turn out that there are in fact whole sections of the country which believe that it is legitimate to chop off peoples hands because they stole a hen - if that should really turn out to be the genuine belief of responsible, educated people in the North than I would say there is no chance. But I do not believe that is the case. The sharia was always there but it was never force onto non-Muslims and it was not ever applied in the area of criminal law.

  Chinua Achebe

  Country, Believe, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness. Narrow is the way and few the number. To fill the Lord's holy temple with an idolatrous crowd clamoring for signs was a folly of everlasting consequence. Our Lord used the whip only once in His life - to drive the crowd away from His church.

  Chinua Achebe

  Should Have, Numbers, Stressed

  7 Copy quote

• The writer is often faced with two choices--turn away from the reality of life's intimidating complexity or conquer its mystery by battling with it. The writer who chooses the former soon runs out of energy and produces elegantly tired fiction.

  Chinua Achebe

  Running, Writing, Tired

  Chinua Achebe (2012). “There Was a Country: A Memoir”, p.50, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• I don't care about age very much.

  Chinua Achebe

  Age, Care, I Don't Care

  4 Copy quote

• Once you have really done all you can, then you can show it to people. But I find this is increasingly not the case with the younger people. They do a first draft and want somebody to finish it off for them with good advice.

  Chinua Achebe

  People, Advice, Done

  6 Copy quote

• When Rimbaud became a slave trader, he stopped writing poetry.

  Chinua Achebe

  Writing, Slave, Traders

  8 Copy quote

• We know the potentiality of Nigeria and the talent and the resources and to see it having no effect on the lives of the people, on the infrastructure, the roads, the hospitals, the schools, seeing no effect of these talents, these recourses is very frustrating. But it is the result of the damage that was done to the country, especially during the various military regimes.

  Chinua Achebe

  Country, Military, School

  4 Copy quote

• Unoka went into an inner room and soon returned with a small wooden disc containing a kola nut, some alligator pepper and a lump of white chalk. "I have kola," he announced when he sat down, and passed the disc over to his guest. "Thank you. He who brings kola brings life. But I think you ought to break it," replied Okoye passing back the disc. "No, it is for you, I think," and they argued like this for a few moments before Unoka accepted the honor of breaking the kola. Okoye, meanwhile, took the lump of chalk, drew some lines on the floor, and then painted his big toe.

  Chinua Achebe

  Thinking, Nuts, White

  Chinua Achebe (1996). “Things Fall Apart”, p.5, Heinemann

  8 Copy quote

• There is something about important stories that is not just the message, but also the way that message is conveyed, the arrangement of the words, the felicity of the language. So it's really a balance between your commitment, whether it's political or economic or whatever, and your craft as an artist.

  Chinua Achebe

  Commitment, Artist, Political

  "Rip Chinua Achebe (1930 - 2013)" by Lisa Dusenbery, therumpus.net. March 22, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• Real tragedy is never resolved. It goes on hopelessly for ever.

  Chinua Achebe

  Real, Tragedy, Goes On

  Chinua Achebe (2011). “No Longer at Ease”, p.44, Anchor

  4 Copy quote

• I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.

  Chinua Achebe

  Growing Up, Thinking, People

  11 Copy quote

• A good leader for instance is somebody like Nelson Mandela. I do not have seen such people coming every generation, maybe every ten generations, every hundred generations. People who are miracle workers.

  Chinua Achebe

  People, Leader, Miracle

  Source: www.ehlingmedia.com

  4 Copy quote

• The market literature, which was particularly strong in Igboland, in Onitsha, today it is no longer strong. It is one of the victims of the civil war, that market was actually destroyed and at the end of the war a new Nigeria has struggled to come into being and I believe that what is probably going to replace the market literature might be the video, which they have taken to in a big way, creating dramas. So that may be the next thing way we will see coming out of the local basic level in our society.

  Chinua Achebe

  Strong, War, Drama

  6 Copy quote

• If the clan did not exact punishment for an offense against the great goddess, her wrath was loosed on all the land and not just on the offender. As the elders said, if one finger brought oil it soiled all the others.

  Chinua Achebe

  Land, Punishment, Oil

  Chinua Achebe (1992). “Things Fall Apart”, Everyman's Library

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Chinua Achebe

  Writing, Men, Thinking

  Chinua Achebe, Bernth Lindfors (1997). “Conversations with Chinua Achebe”, p.19, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  4 Copy quote

• Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story.

  Chinua Achebe

  Character, Worry, Plot

  7 Copy quote

• You don't ever want to say to a young person, You can't, or, You are no good. Some people might be able to do it, but I don't think I am a policeman for literature. So I tell them, Sweat it out, do your best.

  Chinua Achebe

  Thinking, Sweat, People

  6 Copy quote

• It's so easy to get into the same routine. A novel every two years; perhaps, improving technique. But I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in doing something fundamentally important--and therefore, it needs time. And what I've been doing, really, is avoiding this pressure to get into the habit of one novel a year. This is what is expected of novelists. And I have never been really too much concerned with doing what is expected of novelists, or writers, or artists. I want to do what I believe is important.

  Chinua Achebe

  Believe, Writing, Artist

  6 Copy quote

• I don't like to see mistakes on the typewriter. I like a perfect script. On the typewriter I will sometimes leave a phrase that is not right, not what I want, simply because to change it would be a bit messy.

  Chinua Achebe

  Mistake, Typewriters, Perfect

  6 Copy quote

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