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What is modesty but inverted pride?

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
Inverted
Modesty
Pride

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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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The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
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A man's life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.
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If the clan did not exact punishment for an offense against the great goddess, her wrath was loosed on all the land and not just on the offender. As the elders said, if one finger brought oil it soiled all the others.
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It is difficult to express the reality of Ibo society in classical English.
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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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A pen on paper is the ideal way for me. I am not really very comfortable with machines I never learned to type very well.
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A man who makes trouble for others is also making trouble for himself.
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When Rimbaud became a slave trader, he stopped writing poetry.
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After a war life catches desperately at passing hints of normalcy like vines entwining a hollow twig.
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I think once you have done all you can to a manuscript, let it find its way in the world.
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One reason why I am quite angry with what is happening in Nigeria today is that everything has collapsed. If I decide to go back now, there will be so many problems - where will I find the physical therapy and other things that I now require?
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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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The problem with leaderless uprisings taking over is that you don't always know what you get at the other end. If you are not careful you could replace a bad government with one much worse!
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I'm very primitive I write with a pen.
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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.
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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.
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A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.
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This is why I find racism impossible, because this is against humanity.
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The language of young men is pull down and destroy but an old man speaks of conciliation.
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