People are worms, and even the God who created them is immensely bored with their antics.
AMA ATA AIDOOThey had always told me that I wrote like a man.
More Ama Ata Aidoo Quotes
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It is a matter of some interest, that the only other volume A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt reminds one of is Ake, by Wole Soyinka. What is it about these Yorubas?
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Sometimes a word or an argument will trigger a poem.
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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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O yes, everyone gets lonely some time or other.
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Once an interesting idea or theme occurs to me then I would want to write a poem about it. The rest, frankly, is not difficult.
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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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I always wanted to write poetry, even when I was very young.
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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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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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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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No matter what anybody says, we can’t have it all. Not if you are a woman. Not yet.
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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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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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Humans, not places, make memories.
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