Soyinka’s Death at Dawn, Auden’s Musée des Beaux Arts, Stevie Smith’s Not Waving but Drowning and Wislawa Szymborska’s Some People come to mind immediately. But there are plenty, plenty more that I enjoy.
AMA ATA AIDOOFor us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and authoritarianism.
More Ama Ata Aidoo Quotes
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Life is inspirational; sometimes it comes from the most unlikely places.
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The very old certainly do not go back on lunch remains but they do bite back at old conversational topics.
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After all, if we look closer into ourselves, shall we not admit that the warmth from other people comes so sweet to us when it comes, because, we always carry with us the knowledge of the cold loneliness of death?
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Politicians are easy to attack, but frankly, we are all guilty of not meeting the needs of Africa’s young people properly.
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I always wanted to write poetry, even when I was very young.
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For us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and authoritarianism.
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Things are working out… towards their dazzling conclusions.
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They had always told me that I wrote like a man.
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Humans, not places, make memories.
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At the age of 15, a teacher had asked me what I wanted to do for a career, and without knowing why or even how I replied that I wanted to be a poet.
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Sometimes a word or an argument will trigger a poem.
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It is understandable why the African artist is utilitarian.
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Once in a while I catch myself wondering whether I would have found the courage to write if I had not started to write when I was too young to know what was good for me.
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I’ve written poems about gifts.
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the best way to sharpen a knife is not to whet one side of it only. And neither can you solve a riddle by considering only one end of it.
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