Quote

The people you see in Nigeria today have always lived as neighbors in the same space for as long as we can remember. So it's a matter of settling down, lowering the rhetoric, the level of hostility in the rhetoric is too high.

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
Always
Level
Lowering
People
Levels
Nigeria
High
Hostility
Space
Neighbors
Remember
Rhetoric
Today
Settling
Matter
Neighbor
Long
Lived

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This is not pessimism but rather casting a cold eye on things. It is only one man's story, and I think that things will go better, but difficulties exist and nothing is served by hiding them under a poetic veil or under a lyricism of the past. I am against slogans.
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If you're rooted to a spot, you miss a lot of the grace. So you keep moving, and this is the way I think the world's stories should be told - from many different perspectives.
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I think the language that we use in dealing with one another is very important. And even if I am called upon to bring out some money to support a regime, and I am entitled to say I do not like what that regime does and obviously I am not going to put money there - you cannot really say this is wrong or this is unreasonable.
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When brothers fight to death a stranger inherit their father’s estate
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Whenever I try to do anything on a typewriter, it's like having this machine between me and the words what comes out is not quite what would come out if I were scribbling.
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There was a saying in Umuofia that as a man danced so the drums were beaten for him.
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What a man does not know is greater than he.
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It is difficult to express the reality of Ibo society in classical English.
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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.
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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.
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An old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb
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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.
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Do you blame a vulture for perching over a carcass?
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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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I prefer to go on trying all kinds of things, not to be told, This is the way it is done.
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They have not always elected the best leaders, particularly after a long period in which they have not used this facility of free election. You tend to lose the habit.
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One reason why I am quite angry with what is happening in Nigeria today is that everything has collapsed. If I decide to go back now, there will be so many problems - where will I find the physical therapy and other things that I now require?
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Men have learned to shoot without missing their mark and I have learned to fly without perching on a twig.
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