Chinua Achebe: Trending quotes (page 2)

“Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!”

“People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience.”

“My weapon is literature”

“There is no story that is not true.”

“Charity… is the opium of the privileged.”

“We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb"He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.”

“Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.”

“Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.”

“A proud heart can survive general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone.”

“… when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.”

“Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.”

“It always surprised him when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair.”

“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.”

“The Ibo people have a proverb that when a man says yes his chi says yes also. Okonkwo said yes very strongly, so his chi agreed. And not only his chi but his clan too, because it judged a man by the work of his hands.”

“As a man danced so the drums were beaten for him.”

“There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.”

“A man to whom you do a favor will not understand if you say nothing, make no noise, just walk away. You may cause more trouble by refusing a bribe than by accepting it.”

“For an African writing in English is not without its serious setbacks. He often finds himself describing situations or modes of thought which have no direct equivalent in the English way of life. Caught in that situation he can do one of two things. He can try and contain what he wants to say within the limits of conventional English or he can try to push back those limits to accommodate his ideas … I submit that those who can do the work of extending the frontiers of English so as to accommodate African thought-patterns must do it through their mastery of English and not out of innocence.”

“It was like beginning life anew without the vigor and enthusiasm of youth, like learning to become left-handed in old age.”