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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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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
Developed
English
Way
Unless
Language
Use
Igbo
Write
Affects
Stories
Elsewhere
Writing
Extent

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

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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
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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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Whatever music you beat on your drum there is somebody who can dance to it.
Chinua Achebe
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This is why I find racism impossible, because this is against humanity.
Chinua Achebe
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It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.
Chinua Achebe
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In my definition I am a protest writer, with restraint.
Chinua Achebe
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Oh, the most important thing about myself is that my life has been full of changes. Therefore, when I observe the world, I don't expect to see it just like I was seeing the fellow who lives in the next room.
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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When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
Chinua Achebe
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When brothers fight to death a stranger inherit their father’s estate
Chinua Achebe
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Living fire begets cold, impotent ash.
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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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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A chief does not hurry.
Chinua Achebe
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Art should be on the side of humanity.
Chinua Achebe
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There must be areas in which a particular character does not represent you.
Chinua Achebe
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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
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Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.
Chinua Achebe
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When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.
Chinua Achebe
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The language of young men is pull down and destroy but an old man speaks of conciliation.
Chinua Achebe