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People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what is there in front of them.

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
Already
People
Confirm
Heads
Africa
Fail
Fronts
Front
Failing

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

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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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No man however great is greater than his people
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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.
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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.
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When a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.
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I don't praise my people. I am their greatest critic.
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The sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them.
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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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When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
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A kinsman in trouble had to be saved, not blamed anger against a brother was felt in the flesh, not in the bone.
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The man that brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit.
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When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.
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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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Beware Okonkwo! she warned. Beware of exchanging words with Agbala. Does a man speak when a god speaks? Beware!
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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.
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If you're rooted to a spot, you miss a lot of the grace. So you keep moving, and this is the way I think the world's stories should be told - from many different perspectives.
Chinua Achebe
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We live in a sea of general ideas, so that's not a novel, since there are so many general ideas. But the moment a particular idea is linked to a character, it's like an engine moves it. Then you have a novel underway.
Chinua Achebe
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If a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings.
Chinua Achebe
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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.
Chinua Achebe
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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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