Only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior. The story outlives the sound of the war drum… The story is our escort. Without it we are blind… It is the thing that sets us apart from cattle.
CHINUA ACHEBEThe impatient idealist says: ‘Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.’ But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.
More Chinua Achebe Quotes
-
-
A man who does not lick his lips, can he blame the harmattan for drying them?
CHINUA ACHEBE -
Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray-a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical & moral deformities.
CHINUA ACHEBE -
Art is man’s constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.
CHINUA ACHEBE -
One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.
CHINUA ACHEBE -
It has always been quite apparent to me that no important story can fail to tell us something of value to us.
CHINUA ACHEBE -
The man that brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit.
CHINUA ACHEBE -
There is that great proverb – that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.
CHINUA ACHEBE -
A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday.
CHINUA ACHEBE -
Charity is the opium of the privileged.
CHINUA ACHEBE -
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE -
When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.
CHINUA ACHEBE -
Every generation must find its mission and fulfill it, as Fanon said – or betray it. So it is not something that you can write up on the wall, saying this is what has to be done. Every generation has to discover what it needs to do.
CHINUA ACHEBE -
The lizard that jumped from a high Iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no-one else did.
CHINUA ACHEBE -
A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.
CHINUA ACHEBE -
He is a fool who treats his brother worse than a stranger.
CHINUA ACHEBE