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It is difficult to express the reality of Ibo society in classical English.

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
Difficult
Reality
Classical
Express
English
Society

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[Would] a sensible man spit out the juicy morsel that good fortune put in his mouth?
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Those whose kernels were cracked by benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble.
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Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft, not the audience, that should be the greatest motivating factor.
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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.
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A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk.
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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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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.
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When Rimbaud became a slave trader, he stopped writing poetry.
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Poetry and slave trading cannot be bedfellows. That's where I stand.
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I don't like to see mistakes on the typewriter. I like a perfect script. On the typewriter I will sometimes leave a phrase that is not right, not what I want, simply because to change it would be a bit messy.
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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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I couldn't tell you why but now I know a story is in fact where you discover who you are, where a culture discovers what it is and I just think that this is a terribly important place to get into and that I would enjoy it.
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Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.
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In my definition I am a protest writer, with restraint.
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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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It always surprised him when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair.
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...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.
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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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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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When we hear a house has fallen do we ask if the ceiling fell with it?
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