Quote

Living fire begets cold, impotent ash.

Chinua Achebe

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Ashes
Cold
Fire
Living
Impotent
Begets

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

Image
In such a regime, I say, you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chest-without asking to be paid.
Chinua Achebe
Image
I find Nigeria very frustrating. I am not alone in this. There are many Nigerians abroad. As you know, the brain drain is just incredible. And when we talk to one another and there is a certain sense of frustration and but I struggle not to let the frustration degenerate into dispair.
Chinua Achebe
Image
The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.
Chinua Achebe
Image
What a man does not know is greater than he.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Poetry and slave trading cannot be bedfellows. That's where I stand.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Do you blame a vulture for perching over a carcass?
Chinua Achebe
Image
Wisdom is like a goatskin bag every man carries his own.
Chinua Achebe
Image
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.
Chinua Achebe
Image
When I was in England, I had seen advertisements about typing agencies I had learned that if you really want to make a good impression, you should have your manuscript well typed.
Chinua Achebe
Image
An old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb
Chinua Achebe
Image
The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Beware Okonkwo! she warned. Beware of exchanging words with Agbala. Does a man speak when a god speaks? Beware!
Chinua Achebe
Image
Americans, it seems to me, tend to protect their children from the harshness of life, in their interest. That's not the way my people rear their children. They let them experience the world as it is.
Chinua Achebe
Image
I believe in the complexity of the human story, and that there's no way you can tell that story in one way and say, 'this is it.' Always there will be someone who can tell it differently depending on where they are standing ... this is the way I think the world's stories should be told: from many different perspectives.
Chinua Achebe
Image
I'm a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just knew that there was something inside me that wanted me to tell who I was, and that would have come out even if I didn't want it.
Chinua Achebe
Image
The impatient idealist says: 'Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.' But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Do not be in a hurry to rush into the pleasures of the world like the young antelope who danced herself lame when the main dance was yet to come.
Chinua Achebe
Image
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
Image
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.
Chinua Achebe
Image
The language of young men is pull down and destroy but an old man speaks of conciliation.
Chinua Achebe