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When we hear a house has fallen do we ask if the ceiling fell with it?

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
Provoking
Fell
Fallen
Hear
Asks
House
Ceiling
Ceilings

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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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When there is a big tree small ones climb on its back to reach the sun.
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In such a regime, I say, you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chest-without asking to be paid.
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When brothers fight to death a stranger inherit their father’s estate
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When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.
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My weapon is literature
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The most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable.
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When a coward sees a man he can beat he becomes hungry for a fight.
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A chief does not hurry.
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My parents were early converts to Christianity in my part of Nigeria. They were not just converts my father was an evangelist, a religious teacher. He and my mother traveled for thirty-five years to different parts of Igboland, spreading the gospel.
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Those whose kernels were cracked by benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble.
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Presidents do not go off on leave without telling the country.
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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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...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.
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When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths it is because we see something which you do not see.
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Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.
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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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In my definition I am a protest writer, with restraint.
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Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray-a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical & moral deformities
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If you ask me, Now, is it your best book? I would say, I don't really know. I wouldn't even want to say. And I'd even go on and say, I don't even think so.
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