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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
Failing
Already
People
Confirm
Heads
Africa
Fail
Fronts
Front

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The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use.
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When Rimbaud became a slave trader, he stopped writing poetry.
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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.
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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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My weapon is literature
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What a man does not know is greater than he.
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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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This is why I find racism impossible, because this is against humanity.
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I am not an early-morning person I don't like to get out of bed, and so I don't begin writing at five A.M., though some people, I hear, do. I write once my day has started. And I can work late into the night, also.
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If a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings.
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A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk.
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Only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior. The story outlives the sound of the war drum... The story is our escort. Without it we are blind... It is the thing that sets us apart from cattle.
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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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There must be areas in which a particular character does not represent you.
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I don't care about age very much.
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The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.
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A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday.
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I'm a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just knew that there was something inside me that wanted me to tell who I was, and that would have come out even if I didn't want it.
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He is a fool who treats his brother worse than a stranger.
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Whatever music you beat on your drum there is somebody who can dance to it.
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