Quote

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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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
Story
Drum
Sound
Cattle
War
Sets
Stories
Warrior
Without
Apart
Thing
Blind
Continue
Outlives
Beyond
Escort

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

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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
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The man that brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit.
Chinua Achebe
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A good leader for instance is somebody like Nelson Mandela. I do not have seen such people coming every generation, maybe every ten generations, every hundred generations. People who are miracle workers.
Chinua Achebe
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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.
Chinua Achebe
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When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.
Chinua Achebe
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After a war life catches desperately at passing hints of normalcy like vines entwining a hollow twig.
Chinua Achebe
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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.
Chinua Achebe
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A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.
Chinua Achebe
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No man however great is greater than his people
Chinua Achebe
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...Nothing puzzles God
Chinua Achebe
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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.
Chinua Achebe
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Whenever I try to do anything on a typewriter, it's like having this machine between me and the words what comes out is not quite what would come out if I were scribbling.
Chinua Achebe
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I'm very primitive I write with a pen.
Chinua Achebe
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When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.
Chinua Achebe
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A man's life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.
Chinua Achebe
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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.
Chinua Achebe
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...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.
Chinua Achebe
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He is a fool who treats his brother worse than a stranger.
Chinua Achebe
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What is modesty but inverted pride?
Chinua Achebe
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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.
Chinua Achebe