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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
Must
Storyteller
Would
Creates
Otherwise
Memory
Meaning
Memories
Survivors
History
Surviving
Makes
Survivor
More quotes by 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
When there is a big tree small ones climb on its back to reach the sun.
Chinua Achebe
When Rimbaud became a slave trader, he stopped writing poetry.
Chinua Achebe
When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
Chinua Achebe
A man who lived on the banks of the Niger should not wash his hands with spittle.
Chinua Achebe
The writer is often faced with two choices--turn away from the reality of life's intimidating complexity or conquer its mystery by battling with it. The writer who chooses the former soon runs out of energy and produces elegantly tired fiction.
Chinua Achebe
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
A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.
Chinua Achebe
When I was in England, I had seen advertisements about typing agencies I had learned that if you really want to make a good impression, you should have your manuscript well typed.
Chinua Achebe
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
The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery.
Chinua Achebe
When brothers fight to death a stranger inherit their father’s estate
Chinua Achebe
You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the babies.
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
Africa is people may seem too simple and too obvious to some of us. But I have found in the course of my travels through the world that the most simple things can still givwe us a lot of trouble, even the brightest among us: this is particularly so in matters concerning Africa.
Chinua Achebe
We do not seek to hurt any man, but if any man seeks to hurt us may he break his neck.
Chinua Achebe
Mosquito [...] had asked Ear to marry him, whereupon Ear fell on the floor in uncontrollable laughter. How much longer do you think you will live? she asked. You are already a skeleton. Mosquito went away humiliated, and any time he passed her way he told Ear that he was still alive.
Chinua Achebe
The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.
Chinua Achebe
What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens - whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.
Chinua Achebe
