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I'm a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just knew that there was something inside me that wanted me to tell who I was, and that would have come out even if I didn't want it.
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
Ideas
Practised
Wanted
Began
Come
Writer
Even
Inside
Going
Knew
Something
Idea
Would
Tell
Didn
More quotes by Chinua Achebe
When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk
Chinua Achebe
When Rimbaud became a slave trader, he stopped writing poetry.
Chinua Achebe
When a coward sees a man he can beat he becomes hungry for a fight.
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When a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.
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There is that great proverb — that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.
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The world is large,” said Okonkwo. “I have even heard that in some tribes a man’s children belong to his wife and her family.” “That cannot be,” said Machi. “You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the babies.
Chinua Achebe
Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.
Chinua Achebe
A good leader for instance is somebody like Nelson Mandela. I do not have seen such people coming every generation, maybe every ten generations, every hundred generations. People who are miracle workers.
Chinua Achebe
The sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them.
Chinua Achebe
A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.
Chinua Achebe
Unless I'm writing in the Igbo language, I use a language developed elsewhere, which is English. That affects the way I write. It even affects to some extent the stories I write.
Chinua Achebe
Once you have really done all you can, then you can show it to people. But I find this is increasingly not the case with the younger people. They do a first draft and want somebody to finish it off for them with good advice.
Chinua Achebe
Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.
Chinua Achebe
Those whose kernels were cracked by benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble.
Chinua Achebe
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.
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
In my definition I am a protest writer, with restraint.
Chinua Achebe
What you must accept is that your life is not going to be the same while you are writing.
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
A man who lived on the banks of the Niger should not wash his hands with spittle.
Chinua Achebe
