If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own. If you don’t like what somebody says, say what it is you don’t like.
CHINUA ACHEBEWhen a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.
More Chinua Achebe Quotes
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Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.
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We do not seek to hurt any man, but if any man seeks to hurt us may he break his neck.
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A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.
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One reason why I am quite angry with what is happening in Nigeria today is that everything has collapsed. If I decide to go back now, there will be so many problems – where will I find the physical therapy and other things that I now require?
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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.
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As a rule I don’t like suffering to no purpose. Suffering should be creative, should give birth to something good and lovely.
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A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday.
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A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.
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The world is large,” said Okonkwo. “I have even heard that in some tribes a man’s children belong to his wife and her family.” “That cannot be,” said Machi. “You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the babies.
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I don’t like to see mistakes on the typewriter. I like a perfect script. On the typewriter I will sometimes leave a phrase that is not right, not what I want, simply because to change it would be a bit messy.
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If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own.
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No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man.
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If I hold her hand she says, ‘Don’t touch!’ If I hold her foot she says ‘Don’t touch!’ But when I hold her waist-beads she pretends not to know.
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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.
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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






