Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit — in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever.
CHINUA ACHEBELiterature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.
More Chinua Achebe Quotes
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The singer should sing well even if it is merely to himself, rather than dance badly for the whole world.
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There is nothing to fear from someone who shouts.
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When a man is at peace with his gods and ancestors, his harvest will be good or bad according to the strength of his arm.
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An angry man is always a stupid man.
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It is the story that owns and directs us. It is the thing that makes us different from cattle; it is the mark on the face that sets one people apart from their neighbors.
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I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.
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Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft, not the audience, that should be the greatest motivating factor.
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The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use.
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In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn’t perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
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We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n’ani ji onwe ya: ‘He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.’
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I prefer to go on trying all kinds of things, not to be told, This is the way it is done.
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It is praiseworthy to be brave and fearless, but sometimes it is better to be a coward. We often stand in the compound of a coward to point at the ruins where a brave man used to live.
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When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.
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People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.
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An artist in my view is always afraid of extremists; he is always afraid of those who claim to have found the ultimate solution to any question.
CHINUA ACHEBE