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A chief does not hurry.

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
Doe
Hurry
Chief
Chiefs

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When a man is at peace with his gods and ancestors, his harvest will be good or bad according to the strength of his arm.
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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.
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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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The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
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When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
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I think the language that we use in dealing with one another is very important. And even if I am called upon to bring out some money to support a regime, and I am entitled to say I do not like what that regime does and obviously I am not going to put money there - you cannot really say this is wrong or this is unreasonable.
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Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.
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While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.
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We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n'ani ji onwe ya: 'He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.'
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I feel that the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit new African surroundings.
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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.
Chinua Achebe
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Wisdom is like a goatskin bag every man carries his own.
Chinua Achebe
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When I think of the standing, the importance and the erudition of all these people who see nothing about racism in Heart of Darkness, I'm convinced that we must really be living in different worlds.
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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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.
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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There was a saying in Umuofia that as a man danced so the drums were beaten for him.
Chinua Achebe
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When we hear a house has fallen do we ask if the ceiling fell with it?
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Unless I'm writing in the Igbo language, I use a language developed elsewhere, which is English. That affects the way I write. It even affects to some extent the stories I write.
Chinua Achebe
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A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing
Chinua Achebe