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I do not actually see how art, literature can be anything other that being in that domain of trying to tell us, trying to get us to see what is important in our lives.

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
Art
Anything
Important
Trying
Domain
Literature
Actually
Lives
Tell

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

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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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[Would] a sensible man spit out the juicy morsel that good fortune put in his mouth?
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It always surprised him when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair.
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What is modesty but inverted pride?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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They have not always elected the best leaders, particularly after a long period in which they have not used this facility of free election. You tend to lose the habit.
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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.
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The people you see in Nigeria today have always lived as neighbors in the same space for as long as we can remember. So it's a matter of settling down, lowering the rhetoric, the level of hostility in the rhetoric is too high.
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In my definition I am a protest writer, with restraint.
Chinua Achebe
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We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.
Chinua Achebe
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Wisdom is like a goatskin bag every man carries his own.
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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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There was a saying in Umuofia that as a man danced so the drums were beaten for him.
Chinua Achebe
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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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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.
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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I am against people reaping where they have not sown. But we have a saying that if you want to eat a toad you should look for a fat and juicy one.
Chinua Achebe
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A man who makes trouble for others is also making trouble for himself.
Chinua Achebe