Quote

If you were to loose the habit of making the effort to get the book and read the words one by one you would have lost something terribly important. So I think that we have a task to ensure that this doesn't happen.

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
Thinking
Lost
Task
Doesn
Tasks
Happens
Habit
Book
Happen
Important
Effort
Something
Read
Terribly
Would
Words
Ensure
Think
Making
Loose

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

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A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.
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No man however great is greater than his people
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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.
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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.
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Children are very fair minded, they really are.
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The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.
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I'm very primitive I write with a pen.
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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
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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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When mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth
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The impatient idealist says: 'Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.' But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.
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When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.
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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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There's no lack of writers writing novels in America, about America. Therefore, it seems to me it would be wasteful for me to add to that huge number of people writing here when there are so few people writing about somewhere else.
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I don't care about age very much.
Chinua Achebe
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It is difficult to express the reality of Ibo society in classical English.
Chinua Achebe
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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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When a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.
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I prefer to go on trying all kinds of things, not to be told, This is the way it is done.
Chinua Achebe
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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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