Quote

When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.

Chinua Achebe

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Chinua Achebe
Age: 82 †
Born: 1930
Born: November 16
Died: 2013
Died: March 22
Essayist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Short Story Writer
University Teacher
Writer
Albert Chinualumogu Achebe
Brought
Door
Doors
Stool
Worry
Stools
Suffering
Knocks
Seat
Seats
Tells

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

Image
When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.
Chinua Achebe
Image
I think dialects should be left alone. People should write in whatever dialect they feel they want to write. In the fullness of time, these dialects will sort themselves out.
Chinua Achebe
Image
I couldn't tell you why but now I know a story is in fact where you discover who you are, where a culture discovers what it is and I just think that this is a terribly important place to get into and that I would enjoy it.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Children are very fair minded, they really are.
Chinua Achebe
Image
I'm amazed when I think about students today. They know from day one what they are going to be. We didn't. We just coasted. We just knew that things would work out.
Chinua Achebe
Image
The writer is often faced with two choices--turn away from the reality of life's intimidating complexity or conquer its mystery by battling with it. The writer who chooses the former soon runs out of energy and produces elegantly tired fiction.
Chinua Achebe
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I don't care about age very much.
Chinua Achebe
Image
It is only the story...that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence.The story is our escortwithout it,we are blind.Does the blind man own his escort?No,neither do we the storyrather,it is the story that owns us.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Art should be on the side of humanity.
Chinua Achebe
Image
We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Children are young, but they're not naive. And they're honest. They're not going to keep wide awake if the story is boring. When they get excited you can see it in their eyes.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Presidents do not go off on leave without telling the country.
Chinua Achebe
Image
I think once you have done all you can to a manuscript, let it find its way in the world.
Chinua Achebe
Image
The man that brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit.
Chinua Achebe
Image
The Novelist As Teacher”: “I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their past – with all its imperfections – was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God’s behalf delivered them.
Chinua Achebe
Image
We live in a sea of general ideas, so that's not a novel, since there are so many general ideas. But the moment a particular idea is linked to a character, it's like an engine moves it. Then you have a novel underway.
Chinua Achebe
Image
A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.
Chinua Achebe
Image
A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing
Chinua Achebe