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If you ask me, Now, is it your best book? I would say, I don't really know. I wouldn't even want to say. And I'd even go on and say, I don't even think so.

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
Even
Really
Would
Think
Thinking
Wouldn
Asks
Best
Book

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

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When brothers fight to death a stranger inherit their father’s estate
Chinua Achebe
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The world is large,” said Okonkwo. “I have even heard that in some tribes a man’s children belong to his wife and her family.” “That cannot be,” said Machi. “You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the babies.
Chinua Achebe
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Beware Okonkwo! she warned. Beware of exchanging words with Agbala. Does a man speak when a god speaks? Beware!
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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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Presidents do not go off on leave without telling the country.
Chinua Achebe
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The writer is often faced with two choices--turn away from the reality of life's intimidating complexity or conquer its mystery by battling with it. The writer who chooses the former soon runs out of energy and produces elegantly tired fiction.
Chinua Achebe
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Diversity is not an abnormality but the very reality of our planet. The human world manifests the same reality and will not seek our permission to celebrate itself in the magnificence of its endless varieties. Civility is a sensible attribute in this kind of world we have narrowness of heart and mind is not.
Chinua Achebe
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Art should be on the side of humanity.
Chinua Achebe
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Those whose kernels were cracked by benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble.
Chinua Achebe
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The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery.
Chinua Achebe
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Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray-a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical & moral deformities
Chinua Achebe
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A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk.
Chinua Achebe
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When a new saying gets to the land of empty men, they lose their heads over it.
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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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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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.
Chinua Achebe
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Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist. That this simple truth is glossed over in criticisms of his work is due to the fact that white racism against Africa is such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely unremarked.
Chinua Achebe
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It has always been quite apparent to me that no important story can fail to tell us something of value to us.
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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Once you have really done all you can, then you can show it to people. But I find this is increasingly not the case with the younger people. They do a first draft and want somebody to finish it off for them with good advice.
Chinua Achebe