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The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.

Chinua Achebe

When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we see something which you do not see.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Mouth Old Ourselves People Sweet
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
The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Damage Repair Time
Nigeria is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Government Leadership Politics
It has always been quite apparent to me that no important story can fail to tell us something of value to us.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Apparent Important Ourselves Quite Value
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 ACHEBE

Expression Feeling Story Talk
When a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Feeling Himself Madness Man Naked Shame
A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Coward Fight Run Time War
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
My weapon is literature.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Literature Myself Weapon
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
People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what is there in front of them.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Confirm Failure Head People See
There is nothing to fear from someone who shouts.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Character Fear Man Nature Oneself Shout
A man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness
CHINUA ACHEBE

Character Ethnicity Greatness Man Pay Respect
When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Death Ground Library Man Old
A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Debt Decay

The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.

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The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.

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Popular Authors

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