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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.

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
Like
Though
Bed
People
Write
Begin
Night
Early
Also
Late
Persons
Started
Person
Hear
Writing
Morning
Work
Five

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There was a saying in Umuofia that as a man danced so the drums were beaten for him.
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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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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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Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story.
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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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Become familiar with your home, but know also about your neighbors. The young man who never went anywhere thinks his mother is the greatest cook.
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My weapon is literature
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There must be areas in which a particular character does not represent you.
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When Rimbaud became a slave trader, he stopped writing poetry.
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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.
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An old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb
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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.
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You do not know me,’ said Tortoise. ‘I am a changed man. I have learned that a man who makes trouble for others makes trouble for himself.
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When we hear a house has fallen do we ask if the ceiling fell with it?
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I'm sure if one turned one's mind back from grandiose faults to what is happening to the average man or woman or child in the rural areas, we will probably find that's where the energy for development is.
Chinua Achebe
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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
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It is difficult to express the reality of Ibo society in classical English.
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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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What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens - whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.
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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