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Oh, the most important thing about myself is that my life has been full of changes. Therefore, when I observe the world, I don't expect to see it just like I was seeing the fellow who lives in the next room.

Chinua Achebe

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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
Important
Expect
Thing
Therefore
Life
Room
Like
Rooms
World
Full
Observe
Seeing
Fellow
Lives
Fellows
Next
Changes

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

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When we hear a house has fallen do we ask if the ceiling fell with it?
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One would think he never sucked at his mother’s breast.
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Presidents do not go off on leave without telling the country.
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Wisdom is like a goatskin bag every man carries his own.
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...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.
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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.
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If you ask me, Now, is it your best book? I would say, I don't really know. I wouldn't even want to say. And I'd even go on and say, I don't even think so.
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But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded, but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry.
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As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us.
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Mosquito [...] had asked Ear to marry him, whereupon Ear fell on the floor in uncontrollable laughter. How much longer do you think you will live? she asked. You are already a skeleton. Mosquito went away humiliated, and any time he passed her way he told Ear that he was still alive.
Chinua Achebe
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No man however great is greater than his people
Chinua Achebe
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Now one of the changes that must come to Africa is the idea of limited rule, I mean in term of how long one leader can stay in power. The era of president for life is not gone yet but it is on its way out and that is one of the problems with Mugabe and others.
Chinua Achebe
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There was a saying in Umuofia that as a man danced so the drums were beaten for him.
Chinua Achebe
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What a man does not know is greater than he.
Chinua Achebe
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A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.
Chinua Achebe
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That we are surrounded by deep mysteries is known to all but the incurably ignorant.
Chinua Achebe
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Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.
Chinua Achebe
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If you were to loose the habit of making the effort to get the book and read the words one by one you would have lost something terribly important. So I think that we have a task to ensure that this doesn't happen.
Chinua Achebe
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I feel that the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit new African surroundings.
Chinua Achebe
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Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story.
Chinua Achebe