Quote

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

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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
Without
Beggar
Blundering
Men
Fence
Escort
Like
Blind
Spikes
Neither
Cactus
Story
Progeny
Rather
Beggars
Stories
Owns
Doe
Saves

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Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.
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And theories are no more than fictions which help us to make sense of experience and which are subject to disconfirmation when their explanations are no longer adequate.
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When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
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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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I have so many ideas there are so many things that need to be done, so many possibilities, you know one is terribly excited, but at the same time, you're almost confused, because you don't know where to begin.
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The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use.
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A man who makes trouble for others is also making trouble for himself.
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What a man does not know is greater than he.
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I am against people reaping where they have not sown. But we have a saying that if you want to eat a toad you should look for a fat and juicy one.
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A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk.
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When a man is at peace with his gods and ancestors, his harvest will be good or bad according to the strength of his arm.
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A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.
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When Rimbaud became a slave trader, he stopped writing poetry.
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After a war life catches desperately at passing hints of normalcy like vines entwining a hollow twig.
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He is a fool who treats his brother worse than a stranger.
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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.
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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.
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What you must accept is that your life is not going to be the same while you are writing.
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It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.
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