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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.

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
History
Surviving
Makes
Survivor
Must
Storyteller
Would
Creates
Otherwise
Memory
Meaning
Memories
Survivors

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

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Serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict.
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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.
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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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When mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth
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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
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The problem with leaderless uprisings taking over is that you don't always know what you get at the other end. If you are not careful you could replace a bad government with one much worse!
Chinua Achebe
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Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane. H. P. LOVECRAFT, attributed, Telling It Like It Is Dancing is very important nowadays. No girl will look at you if you can't dance.
Chinua Achebe
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What is modesty but inverted pride?
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I'm sure if one turned one's mind back from grandiose faults to what is happening to the average man or woman or child in the rural areas, we will probably find that's where the energy for development is.
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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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.
Chinua Achebe
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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.
Chinua Achebe
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What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens - whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.
Chinua Achebe
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I find Nigeria very frustrating. I am not alone in this. There are many Nigerians abroad. As you know, the brain drain is just incredible. And when we talk to one another and there is a certain sense of frustration and but I struggle not to let the frustration degenerate into dispair.
Chinua Achebe
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Art should be on the side of humanity.
Chinua Achebe
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When brothers fight to death a stranger inherit their father’s estate
Chinua Achebe
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I don't like to see mistakes on the typewriter. I like a perfect script. On the typewriter I will sometimes leave a phrase that is not right, not what I want, simply because to change it would be a bit messy.
Chinua Achebe
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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.
Chinua Achebe
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Presidents do not go off on leave without telling the country.
Chinua Achebe
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A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing
Chinua Achebe