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Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.
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
Reality
Different
Men
Constant
Create
Effort
Given
Art
Order
More quotes by Chinua Achebe
It is as though the ancestors who made language and knew from what bestiality its use rescued them are saying to us: Beware of interfering with its purpose! For when language is seriously interfered with, when it is disjoined from truth, be it from mere incompetence or worse, from malice, horrors can descend again on mankind.
Chinua Achebe
There's no lack of writers writing novels in America, about America. Therefore, it seems to me it would be wasteful for me to add to that huge number of people writing here when there are so few people writing about somewhere else.
Chinua Achebe
When mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth
Chinua Achebe
What you must accept is that your life is not going to be the same while you are writing.
Chinua Achebe
One would think he never sucked at his mother’s breast.
Chinua Achebe
Anybody who wants to rule a group will find that if this group is quarreling among themselves they leave you alone.
Chinua Achebe
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
Beware Okonkwo! she warned. Beware of exchanging words with Agbala. Does a man speak when a god speaks? Beware!
Chinua Achebe
The most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable.
Chinua Achebe
Serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict.
Chinua Achebe
Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.
Chinua Achebe
There is no story that is not true, [...] The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.
Chinua Achebe
My position is that serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict. I don’t see how art can be called art if its purpose is to frustrate humanity. To make humanity uncomfortable, yes. But intrinsically to be against humanity, that I don’t take.
Chinua Achebe
Stories serve the purpose of consolidating whatever gains people or their leaders have made or imagine they have made in their existing journey thorough the world.
Chinua Achebe
There must be areas in which a particular character does not represent you.
Chinua Achebe
The sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them.
Chinua Achebe
Actually, I identify with all my characters, good and bad. I have to do that in order to make them genuine. I have to understand them even if I don't approve of them. Not completely - it's impossible complete identification is, in fact, not desirable.
Chinua Achebe
The language of young men is pull down and destroy but an old man speaks of conciliation.
Chinua Achebe
I believe in the complexity of the human story, and that there's no way you can tell that story in one way and say, 'this is it.' Always there will be someone who can tell it differently depending on where they are standing ... this is the way I think the world's stories should be told: from many different perspectives.
Chinua Achebe
As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us.
Chinua Achebe
