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 AIDOOGhana is like a lion without a head
More Ama Ata Aidoo Quotes
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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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It is understandable why the African artist is utilitarian.
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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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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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People are worms, and even the God who created them is immensely bored with their antics.
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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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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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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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For us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and authoritarianism.
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Humans, not places, make memories.
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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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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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