Toyin Falola has given us what is truly rare in modern African writing: a seriously funny, racy, irreverent package of memories, and full of the most wonderful pieces of poetry and ordinary information.
AMA ATA AIDOOPeople are worms, and even the God who created them is immensely bored with their antics.
More Ama Ata Aidoo Quotes
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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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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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There are powerful forces undermining progress in Africa. But one must never underestimate the power of the people to bring about change.
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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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Ghana is like a lion without a head
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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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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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They had always told me that I wrote like a man.
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Its a sad moment, really, when parents first become a bit frightened of their children.
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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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Life is inspirational; sometimes it comes from the most unlikely places.
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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 very old certainly do not go back on lunch remains but they do bite back at old conversational topics.
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