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A man who lived on the banks of the Niger should not wash his hands with spittle.

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
Wash
Banks
Lived
Hands
Men
Spittle
Niger

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One would think he never sucked at his mother’s breast.
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I think once you have done all you can to a manuscript, let it find its way in the world.
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He is a fool who treats his brother worse than a stranger.
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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.
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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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Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.
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That we are surrounded by deep mysteries is known to all but the incurably ignorant.
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Poetry and slave trading cannot be bedfellows. That's where I stand.
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Americans, it seems to me, tend to protect their children from the harshness of life, in their interest. That's not the way my people rear their children. They let them experience the world as it is.
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Presidents do not go off on leave without telling the country.
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Become familiar with your home, but know also about your neighbors. The young man who never went anywhere thinks his mother is the greatest cook.
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It is praiseworthy to be brave and fearless, but sometimes it is better to be a coward. We often stand in the compound of a coward to point at the ruins where a brave man used to live.
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When we hear a house has fallen do we ask if the ceiling fell with it?
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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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What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens - whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.
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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.
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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.
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In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
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When there is a big tree small ones climb on its back to reach the sun.
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