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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.

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

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

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A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing
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The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
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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.
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It is as though the ancestors who made language and knew from what bestiality its use rescued them are saying to us: Beware of interfering with its purpose! For when language is seriously interfered with, when it is disjoined from truth, be it from mere incompetence or worse, from malice, horrors can descend again on mankind.
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If you ask me, Now, is it your best book? I would say, I don't really know. I wouldn't even want to say. And I'd even go on and say, I don't even think so.
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When brothers fight to death a stranger inherit their father’s estate
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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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Presidents do not go off on leave without telling the country.
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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.
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In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
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What a man does not know is greater than he.
Chinua Achebe
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When a new saying gets to the land of empty men, they lose their heads over it.
Chinua Achebe
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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.
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If a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings.
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As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us.
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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
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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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[Would] a sensible man spit out the juicy morsel that good fortune put in his mouth?
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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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Dancing is very important nowadays. No girl will look at you if you can't dance.
Chinua Achebe