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The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.

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
World
Mask
Dancing
Stand
Place
Wells
Well
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More quotes by Chinua Achebe

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Mosquito [...] had asked Ear to marry him, whereupon Ear fell on the floor in uncontrollable laughter. How much longer do you think you will live? she asked. You are already a skeleton. Mosquito went away humiliated, and any time he passed her way he told Ear that he was still alive.
Chinua Achebe
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I think once you have done all you can to a manuscript, let it find its way in the world.
Chinua Achebe
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This is not pessimism but rather casting a cold eye on things. It is only one man's story, and I think that things will go better, but difficulties exist and nothing is served by hiding them under a poetic veil or under a lyricism of the past. I am against slogans.
Chinua Achebe
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...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.
Chinua Achebe
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There is that great proverb — that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.
Chinua Achebe
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I don't care about age very much.
Chinua Achebe
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Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.
Chinua Achebe
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The sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them.
Chinua Achebe
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There must be areas in which a particular character does not represent you.
Chinua Achebe
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The people you see in Nigeria today have always lived as neighbors in the same space for as long as we can remember. So it's a matter of settling down, lowering the rhetoric, the level of hostility in the rhetoric is too high.
Chinua Achebe
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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.
Chinua Achebe
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A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday.
Chinua Achebe
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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.
Chinua Achebe
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When there is a big tree small ones climb on its back to reach the sun.
Chinua Achebe
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Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it's far removed from your situation.
Chinua Achebe
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If a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings.
Chinua Achebe
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Dancing is very important nowadays. No girl will look at you if you can't dance.
Chinua Achebe
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Every lizard lies on its belly, so we cannot tell which has a belly-ache
Chinua Achebe
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Africa is people may seem too simple and too obvious to some of us. But I have found in the course of my travels through the world that the most simple things can still givwe us a lot of trouble, even the brightest among us: this is particularly so in matters concerning Africa.
Chinua Achebe
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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