The world is large,” said Okonkwo. “I have even heard that in some tribes a man’s children belong to his wife and her family.” “That cannot be,” said Machi. “You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the babies.
CHINUA ACHEBEWhen I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
More Chinua Achebe Quotes
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When a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.
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A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday.
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Every generation must find its mission and fulfill it, as Fanon said – or betray it. So it is not something that you can write up on the wall, saying this is what has to be done. Every generation has to discover what it needs to do.
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If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own. If you don’t like what somebody says, say what it is you don’t like.
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What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens – whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.
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The singer should sing well even if it is merely to himself, rather than dance badly for the whole world.
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A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk.
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Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft, not the audience, that should be the greatest motivating factor.
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A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.
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Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.
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We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n’ani ji onwe ya: ‘He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.’
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Each of my books is different. Deliberately. I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fullness.
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Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray-a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical & moral deformities.
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He is a fool who treats his brother worse than a stranger.
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Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform.
CHINUA ACHEBE