Nigerian writer (1930-2013)
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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Philadelphia Inquirer, Apr. 2, 2008
As a man danced so the drums were beaten for him.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Things Fall Apart
Charity . . . is the opium of the privileged.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Anthills of the Savannah
Dancing is very important nowadays. No girl will look at you if you can't dance.
CHINUA ACHEBE
No Longer at Ease
Do you blame a vulture for perching over a carcass?
CHINUA ACHEBE
Arrow of God
Fortunately, in real life, we are not in danger of these bizarre extremes unless we consciously work our way into them. I can see no situation in which I will be presented with a Draconic choice between reading books and watching movies; or between English and Igbo. For me, no either/or; I insist on both. Which, you might say, makes my life rather difficult and even a little untidy. But I prefer it that way.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
He who fights for a ne'er-do-well has nothing to show for it except a head covered in earth and grime.
CHINUA ACHEBE
No Longer at Ease
I broke at last
the terror-fringed fascination
that bound my ancient gaze
to those crowding faces
of plunder and seized my
remnant life in a miracle
of decision between white
collar hands and shook it
like a cheap watch in
my ear and threw it down
beside me on the earth floor
and rose to my feet.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Attento, Soul Brother!
If one finger brings oil it soils the others.
CHINUA ACHEBE
No Longer at Ease
In his long evolutionary history, man has scored few greater successes than his creation of human society. For it is on that primeval achievement that he has built those special qualities of mind and of behaviour which, in his own view at least, separate him from lower forms of life. If we sometimes tend to overlook this fact it is only because we have lived so long under the protective ambience of society that we have come to take its benefits for granted.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
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
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
Only half-wits can stumble into such enormities.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Anthills of the Savannah
Praise bounteous
providence if you will
that grants even an ogre
a tiny glow-worm
tenderness encapsulated
in icy caverns of cruel
heart or else despair
for in the very germ
of that kindred love is
lodged the perpetuity
of evil.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Attento, Soul Brother!
She pouted her lips like a gun in my face.
CHINUA ACHEBE
"Misunderstanding", Collected Poems
The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Arrow of God
We must now turn from considering the necessary struggle with language arising, as it were, from its very nature and the nature of the society it serves to the more ominous threat to its integrity brought about neither by its innate inadequacy nor yet by the incompetence and carelessness of its ordinary users, but rather engineered deliberately by those who will manipulate words for their own ends.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
Whatever music you beat on your drum there is somebody who can dance to it.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Arrow of God
A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.
CHINUA ACHEBE
No Longer at Ease
A proud heart can survive general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Things Fall Apart
Clearly there is no moral obligation to write in any particular way. But there is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless. An artist, in my definition of the word, would not be someone who takes sides with the emperor against his powerless subjects.
CHINUA ACHEBE
There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra