Quote

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.

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
Life
Turns
Tired
Intimidating
Energy
Soon
Chooses
Often
Mystery
Faced
Running
Produce
Produces
Away
Writer
Runs
Reality
Fiction
Complexity
Two
Turn
Conquer
Elegantly
Writing
Choices
Former
Battling

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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I prefer to go on trying all kinds of things, not to be told, This is the way it is done.
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I'm amazed when I think about students today. They know from day one what they are going to be. We didn't. We just coasted. We just knew that things would work out.
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When we hear a house has fallen do we ask if the ceiling fell with it?
Chinua Achebe
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Wisdom is like a goatskin bag every man carries his own.
Chinua Achebe
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Serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict.
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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.
Chinua Achebe
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The most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable.
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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It always surprised him when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair.
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If a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings.
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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
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Children are very fair minded, they really are.
Chinua Achebe
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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
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I am against people reaping where they have not sown. But we have a saying that if you want to eat a toad you should look for a fat and juicy one.
Chinua Achebe
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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.
Chinua Achebe
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Presidents do not go off on leave without telling the country.
Chinua Achebe
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When mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth
Chinua Achebe
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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.
Chinua Achebe