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Each of my books is different. Deliberately. I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fullness.

Chinua Achebe

Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Hands Literature Ourselves Reality
No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Man Prosperity Rule Woman
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.’
CHINUA ACHEBE

Himself Humanity Moral Practical Stay Value
A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Children Milk Mom Pay
Charity is the opium of the privileged.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Charity Opium Privilege
Women and music should not be dated.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Date Music Woman
The impatient idealist says: ‘Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.’ But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Earth Existence Ideal Myself Place
And theories are no more than fictions which help us to make sense of experience and which are subject to disconfirmation when their explanations are no longer adequate.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Experience Fiction Subject Theory
When a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Feeling Himself Madness Man Naked Shame
Only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior. The story outlives the sound of the war drum… The story is our escort. Without it we are blind… It is the thing that sets us apart from cattle.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Beyond Blind Cattle Ourselves Warrior
Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Greatness Imagination Man Privilege Yourself
There is that great proverb – that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Deep Glorify Greatness Hunt Proverb Story
People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what is there in front of them.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Confirm Failure Head People See
An artist in my view is always afraid of extremists; he is always afraid of those who claim to have found the ultimate solution to any question.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Afraid Artist Question Solution Ultimate View
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Discover Finding Fulfill Generation Mission Need
In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn’t perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Fake Myself Religion Story Truth

Each of my books is different. Deliberately. I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fullness.

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Each of my books is different. Deliberately. I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fullness.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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