It is understandable why the African artist is utilitarian.
AMA ATA AIDOOThere are powerful forces undermining progress in Africa. But one must never underestimate the power of the people to bring about change.
More Ama Ata Aidoo Quotes
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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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The very old certainly do not go back on lunch remains but they do bite back at old conversational topics.
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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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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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O yes, everyone gets lonely some time or other.
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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.
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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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People are worms, and even the God who created them is immensely bored with their antics.
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Things are working out… towards their dazzling conclusions.
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I always wanted to write poetry, even when I was very young.
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They had always told me that I wrote like a man.
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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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I’ve written poems about gifts.
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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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