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The language of young men is pull down and destroy but an old man speaks of conciliation.
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
Men
Conciliation
Provoking
Speaks
Pull
Destroy
Language
Speak
Young
More quotes by Chinua Achebe
There must be areas in which a particular character does not represent you.
Chinua Achebe
The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use.
Chinua Achebe
We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n'ani ji onwe ya: 'He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.'
Chinua Achebe
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
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.
Chinua Achebe
Art should be on the side of humanity.
Chinua Achebe
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.
Chinua Achebe
Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.
Chinua Achebe
It is difficult to express the reality of Ibo society in classical English.
Chinua Achebe
Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.
Chinua Achebe
The Novelist As Teacher”: “I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their past – with all its imperfections – was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God’s behalf delivered them.
Chinua Achebe
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
A man to whom you do a favor will not understand if you say nothing, make no noise, just walk away. You may cause more trouble by refusing a bribe than by accepting it.
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
Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft, not the audience, that should be the greatest motivating factor.
Chinua Achebe
What I can say is that it was clear to many of us that an indigenous African literary renaissance was overdue. A major objective was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent, and to recast them through stories- prose, poetry, essays, and books for our children. That was my overall goal.
Chinua Achebe
The man that brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit.
Chinua Achebe
I'm very primitive I write with a pen.
Chinua Achebe
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.
Chinua Achebe
What is modesty but inverted pride?
Chinua Achebe
