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A man who does not lick his lips, can he blame the harmattan for drying them?

Chinua Achebe

Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it’s far removed from your situation.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Beginning Identify People Removal Situation Story Yourself
When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don’t just turn it off one day.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Enough Oneself Strength Tradition
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

Discover Finding Fulfill Generation Mission Need
When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Beginning Education Land Learning Myself People
My son even if you want to fall, at least fall where your bones can be gathered.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Bone Fall Myself Son
The singer should sing well even if it is merely to himself, rather than dance badly for the whole world.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Dance Singing World
I am against people reaping where they have not sown. But we have a saying that if you want to eat a toad you should look for a fat and juicy one.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Eat People Talk Yourself
We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Humanity Ourselves Value
We shall all live. We pray for life, children, a good harvest and happiness. You will have what is good for you and I will have what is good for me. Let the kite perch and let the egret perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Break Children Live Prayer Wing
As a rule I don’t like suffering to no purpose. Suffering should be creative, should give birth to something good and lovely.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Creativity Love Purpose Rule Suffering
And theories are no more than fictions which help us to make sense of experience and which are subject to disconfirmation when their explanations are no longer adequate.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Experience Fiction Subject Theory
Art is man’s constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Art Creation Effort Himself Reality
One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Compromise Integrity Refusal Test True
The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Damage Repair Time
People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Creation Inspirational People Story Success
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 ACHEBE

Control Freedom Human Religion Spirit Threat
The problem with leaderless uprisings taking over is that you don’t always know what you get at the other end. If you are not careful you could replace a bad government with one much worse!
CHINUA ACHEBE

End Government Known Leadership Oneself Problem Worst
When a coward sees a man he can beat he becomes hungry for a fight.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Competition Coward Fight Hungry Man See
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?
CHINUA ACHEBE

Angry Collapse Quit Reason Therapy Trouble
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

Audience Beginning Factor Praying Writing
If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Inspirational Motivational Writing Yourself
Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray-a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical & moral deformities.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Moral Photograph Physical
You do not know me,’ said Tortoise. ‘I am a changed man. I have learned that a man who makes trouble for others makes trouble for himself.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Change Learning Myself
If you only hear one side of the story, you have no understanding at all.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Hear Understand Yourself
The 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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Earth Existence Ideal Myself Place
There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Moral Obligation Power Thinking
Now one of the changes that must come to Africa is the idea of limited rule, I mean in term of how long one leader can stay in power. The era of president for life is not gone yet but it is on its way out and that is one of the problems with Mugabe and others.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Change Ideas Leadership Limitation Power Problem Stay

A man who does not lick his lips, can he blame the harmattan for drying them?

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A man who does not lick his lips, can he blame the harmattan for drying them?

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