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.
AMA ATA AIDOOThings are working out… towards their dazzling conclusions.
More Ama Ata Aidoo Quotes
-
-
It is understandable why the African artist is utilitarian.
AMA ATA AIDOO -
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 AIDOO -
No matter what anybody says, we can’t have it all. Not if you are a woman. Not yet.
AMA ATA AIDOO -
I always wanted to write poetry, even when I was very young.
AMA ATA AIDOO -
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.
AMA ATA AIDOO -
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 AIDOO -
There are powerful forces undermining progress in Africa. But one must never underestimate the power of the people to bring about change.
AMA ATA AIDOO -
For us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and authoritarianism.
AMA ATA AIDOO -
O yes, everyone gets lonely some time or other.
AMA ATA AIDOO -
The very old certainly do not go back on lunch remains but they do bite back at old conversational topics.
AMA ATA AIDOO -
Things are working out… towards their dazzling conclusions.
AMA ATA AIDOO -
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 AIDOO -
I’ve written poems about gifts.
AMA ATA AIDOO -
Sometimes a word or an argument will trigger a poem.
AMA ATA AIDOO -
Humans, not places, make memories.
AMA ATA AIDOO