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.
AMA ATA AIDOOAt 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.
More Ama Ata Aidoo Quotes
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I always wanted to write poetry, even when I was very young.
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No matter what anybody says, we can’t have it all. Not if you are a woman. Not yet.
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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.
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People are worms, and even the God who created them is immensely bored with their antics.
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Ghana is like a lion without a head
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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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Its a sad moment, really, when parents first become a bit frightened of their children.
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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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I’ve written poems about gifts.
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They had always told me that I wrote like a man.
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Love is fine for singing about and love songs are good to listen to, sometimes even to dance to. But when we need food for our stomachs and clothes for our backs, love is nothing. Ah my lady, the last man any woman should think of marrying is the man she loves.
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It is understandable why the African artist is utilitarian.
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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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Time by itself means nothing, no matter how fast it moves, unless we give it something to carry for us; something we value. Because it is such a precious vehicle, is time.
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