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 ACHEBEEach of my books is different. Deliberately. I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fullness.
More Chinua Achebe Quotes
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There is no story that is not true.
CHINUA ACHEBE -
An angry man is always a stupid man.
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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 -
My son even if you want to fall, at least fall where your bones can be gathered.
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People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that’s the time to do something about it, not when it’s around your neck.
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If one finger brings oil it soils the others.
CHINUA ACHEBE -
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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I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.
CHINUA ACHEBE -
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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There is that great proverb – that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.
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Do not be in a hurry to rush into the pleasures of the world like the young antelope who danced herself lame when the main dance was yet to come.
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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 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 -
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.’
CHINUA ACHEBE -
Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.
CHINUA ACHEBE