Quote

We live in a sea of general ideas, so that's not a novel, since there are so many general ideas. But the moment a particular idea is linked to a character, it's like an engine moves it. Then you have a novel underway.

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
Character
General
Ideas
Novel
Live
Particular
Underway
Many
Since
Engine
Like
Moment
Engines
Idea
Linked
Moving
Moves
Moments
Sea

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

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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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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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No man however great is greater than his people
Chinua Achebe
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The Novelist As Teacher”: “I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their past – with all its imperfections – was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God’s behalf delivered them.
Chinua Achebe
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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.
Chinua Achebe
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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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Serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict.
Chinua Achebe
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One would think he never sucked at his mother’s breast.
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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There is no story that is not true, [...] The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.
Chinua Achebe
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Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.
Chinua Achebe
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A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing
Chinua Achebe
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Children are very fair minded, they really are.
Chinua Achebe
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We do not seek to hurt any man, but if any man seeks to hurt us may he break his neck.
Chinua Achebe
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The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.
Chinua Achebe
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An old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb
Chinua Achebe
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It is only the story...that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence.The story is our escortwithout it,we are blind.Does the blind man own his escort?No,neither do we the storyrather,it is the story that owns us.
Chinua Achebe
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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
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Men have learned to shoot without missing their mark and I have learned to fly without perching on a twig.
Chinua Achebe
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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.
Chinua Achebe