Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
For us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and authoritarianism. It is understandable why the African artist is utilitarian.
Ama Ata Aidoo
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Ama Ata Aidoo
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 23
Author
Novelist
Poet
Politician
Writer
Christina Ama Aidoo
Must
African
Corruption
Serve
Authoritarianism
Fight
Embarrass
Literature
Utilitarian
Fighting
Africans
Purpose
Understandable
Artist
Expose
More quotes by Ama Ata Aidoo
Soyinka's Death at Dawn, Auden's Musée des Beaux Arts, Stevie Smith's Not Waving but Drowning and Wislawa Szymborska's Some People come to mind immediately. But there are plenty, plenty more that I enjoy.
Ama Ata Aidoo
Once an interesting idea or theme occurs to me then I would want to write a poem about it. The rest, frankly, is not difficult.
Ama Ata Aidoo
No matter what anybody says, we can't have it all. Not if you are a woman. Not yet.
Ama Ata Aidoo
Love is fine for singing about and love songs are good to listen to, sometimes even to dance to. But when we need food for our stomachs and clothes for our backs, love is nothing. Ah my lady, the last man any woman should think of marrying is the man she loves.
Ama Ata Aidoo
They had always told me that I wrote like a man.
Ama Ata Aidoo
At the age of 15, a teacher had asked me what I wanted to do for a career, and without knowing why or even how I replied that I wanted to be a poet.
Ama Ata Aidoo
the best way to sharpen a knife is not to whet one side of it only. And neither can you solve a riddle by considering only one end of it.
Ama Ata Aidoo
Politicians are easy to attack, but frankly, we are all guilty of not meeting the needs of Africa's young people properly.
Ama Ata Aidoo
The very old certainly do not go back on lunch remains but they do bite back at old conversational topics.
Ama Ata Aidoo
I've written poems about gifts. Life is inspirational sometimes it comes from the most unlikely places.
Ama Ata Aidoo
Sometimes a word or an argument will trigger a poem.
Ama Ata Aidoo
There are powerful forces undermining progress in Africa. But one must never underestimate the power of the people to bring about change.
Ama Ata Aidoo
Its a sad moment, really, when parents first become a bit frightened of their children.
Ama Ata Aidoo
Time by itself means nothing, no matter how fast it moves, unless we give it something to carry for us something we value. Because it is such a precious vehicle, is time.
Ama Ata Aidoo
Once in a while I catch myself wondering whether I would have found the courage to write if I had not started to write when I was too young to know what was good for me.
Ama Ata Aidoo
Things are working out... towards their dazzling conclusions.
Ama Ata Aidoo
Humans, not places, make memories.
Ama Ata Aidoo
I always wanted to write poetry, even when I was very young.
Ama Ata Aidoo
People are worms, and even the God who created them is immensely bored with their antics.
Ama Ata Aidoo
money-making is like a god possessing a priest. He never will leave you, until he has occupied you, wholly changed the order of your being, and seared you through and up and down. Then only would he eventually leave you, but nothing of you except an exhausted wreck, lying prone and wondering who are you.
Ama Ata Aidoo
