Background Image

...

Africa Is To Europe As The Picture Is To Dorian Gray-a Carrier Onto Whom The Master Unloads His Physical & Moral Deformities

-Chinua Achebe

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Africa Is To Europe

Chinua Achebe

...

Africa Is To Europe As The Picture Is To Dorian Gray-a Carrier Onto Whom The Master Unloads His Physical & Moral Deformities

Views: 72818

Topic

More From Chinua Achebe

Privilege, You See, Is One Of The Great Adversaries Of The Imagination; It Spreads A Thick Layer Of Adipose Tissue Over Our Sensitivity.

Wisdom Is Like A Goatskin Bag; Every Man Carries His Own.

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.

I Feel That The English Language Will Be Able To Carry The Weight Of My African Experience. But It Will Have To Be A New English, Still In Full Communion With Its Ancestral Home But Altered To Suit New African Surroundings.

Naming Is Like Putting A Stamp On Something And Fixing It. A Kind Of Formaldehyde Sort Of Fixation, But It Becomes Dead, Sitting There Forever, Frozen. So, I'm Not A Great One For These Modernist, Post Modernist, Post Colonial Labels. I Think They Serve Certain Purpose. You Do Need Some Kind Of Sign Post Here And There, But It Can Also Become An End In Itself.

I Wouldn't Have Wanted Anyone To Teach Me How To Write. That's My Own Taste. I Prefer To Stumble On It.

What A Man Does Not Know Is Greater Than He.

Thought Provoking

If You Had Been Poor In Your Last Life I Would Have Asked You To Be Rich When You Come Again. But You Were Rich. If You Had Been A Coward, I Would Have Asked You To Bring Courage. But You Were A Fearless Warrior. If You Had Died Young, I Would Have Asked You To Get Life. But You Lived Long. So I Shall Ask You To Come Again The Way You Came Before.

Poetry And Slave Trading Cannot Be Bedfellows. That's Where I Stand.

There Was A Saying In Umuofia That As A Man Danced So The Drums Were Beaten For Him.

Good Leaders, Competent Leaders Must See It As Primary Task To Create Friendliness. This Something Within The Scope Of Most People. Now Artists, Like Writers And Sort Of Course Have An Added Option Of Using Their Scale And Talent With This In View. It Is Their Business To Create An Environment In Which Our People Will Prosper And Be Happy.

When I Began Going To School And Learned To Read, I Encountered Stories Of Other People And Other Lands. In One Of My Essays, I Remember The Kind Of Things That Fascinated Me. Weird Things, Even, About A Wizard Who Lived In Africa And Went To China To Find A Lamp... Fascinating To Me Because They Were About Things Remote, And Almost Ethereal.

Art Should Be On The Side Of Humanity.

No Man However Great Is Greater Than His People

Thought Provoking

When Rimbaud Became A Slave Trader, He Stopped Writing Poetry.

We Cannot Trample Upon The Humanity Of Others Without Devaluing Our Own.

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.

Living Fire Begets Cold, Impotent Ash.

Art Is Man's Constant Effort To Create For Himself A Different Order Of Reality From That Which Is Given To Him.

I Was A Supporter Of The Desire, In My Section Of Nigeria, To Leave The Federation Because It Was Treated Very Badly With Something That Was Called Genocide In Those Days.

Africa Is To Europe As The Picture Is To Dorian Gray-a Carrier Onto Whom The Master Unloads His Physical & Moral Deformities

Every Generation Must Recognize And Embrace The Task It Is Peculiarly Designed By History And By Providence To Perform.

We Cannot Trample Upon The Humanity Of Others Without Devaluing Our Own. The Igbo, Always Practical, Put It Concretely In Their Proverb Onye Ji Onye N'ani Ji Onwe Ya: 'he Who Will Hold Another Down In The Mud Must Stay In The Mud To Keep Him Down.'

Thought Provoking

Whenever You See A Toad Jumping In Broad Daylight, Then Know That Something Is After Its Life.

For People Who Are Coming Out Of An Oral Tradition, It Is Very Exciting To Get Into Reading And Writing And It Is Quite Interesting How Frequently People Want To Write Their Own Story. Sometimes It Is Straight History - This Is How We Came About, How Our Town Was Created, A Lot Of That Kind Of Effort, As Soon As Literacy Came. The First Thing You Wanted To Do Was To Put Something Down About Who You Are Or How You Are Related To You Neighbors. Then The Next Stage Would Be The Stories, The Cultural Part Of The Story: This Is The Kind Of World Our Ancestors Made Or Aspired To.

Almost Nobody Dances Sober, Unless They Happen To Be Insane. H. P. Lovecraft, Attributed, Telling It Like It Is Dancing Is Very Important Nowadays. No Girl Will Look At You If You Can't Dance.

I Think Once You Have Done All You Can To A Manuscript, Let It Find Its Way In The World.

Beware Okonkwo!" She Warned. "beware Of Exchanging Words With Agbala. Does A Man Speak When A God Speaks? Beware!

A Good Leader For Instance Is Somebody Like Nelson Mandela. I Do Not Have Seen Such People Coming Every Generation, Maybe Every Ten Generations, Every Hundred Generations. People Who Are Miracle Workers.

The Lizard That Jumped From A High Iroko Tree To The Ground Said He Would Praise Himself If No-one Else Did.

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.

The Whole Idea Of A Stereotype Is To Simplify. Instead Of Going Through The Problem Of All This Great Diversity - That It's This Or Maybe That - You Have Just One Large Statement; It Is This.

The Market Literature, Which Was Particularly Strong In Igboland, In Onitsha, Today It Is No Longer Strong. It Is One Of The Victims Of The Civil War, That Market Was Actually Destroyed And At The End Of The War A New Nigeria Has Struggled To Come Into Being And I Believe That What Is Probably Going To Replace The Market Literature Might Be The Video, Which They Have Taken To In A Big Way, Creating Dramas. So That May Be The Next Thing Way We Will See Coming Out Of The Local Basic Level In Our Society.

I Believe In The Complexity Of The Human Story, And That There's No Way You Can Tell That Story In One Way And Say, 'this Is It.' Always There Will Be Someone Who Can Tell It Differently Depending On Where They Are Standing ... This Is The Way I Think The World's Stories Should Be Told: From Many Different Perspectives.

The Only Thing We Have Learnt From Experience Is That We Learn Nothing From Experience.

Thought Provoking

My Position Is That Serious And Good Art Has Always Existed To Help, To Serve, Humanity. Not To Indict. I Don’t See How Art Can Be Called Art If Its Purpose Is To Frustrate Humanity. To Make Humanity Uncomfortable, Yes. But Intrinsically To Be Against Humanity, That I Don’t Take.

It Is As Though The Ancestors Who Made Language And Knew From What Bestiality Its Use Rescued Them Are Saying To Us: Beware Of Interfering With Its Purpose! For When Language Is Seriously Interfered With, When It Is Disjoined From Truth, Be It From Mere Incompetence Or Worse, From Malice, Horrors Can Descend Again On Mankind.

Art Is Created To Make Us, To Make Our Passage Through The World Better, Fruitful - And I Would Say That Every Story In The End, If It Is Good, Tells Us Something. This Is Actually What I Meant When I Said A Novelist Is A Teacher. Which Is Why I Am Constantly Dealing With "didactic". Now A Teacher In The Sense I Use It Is Not Somebody Who Has The Profession Of Standing In Front Of Children, With A Piece Of Chalk In His Hand Scribbling On The Blackboard. That Is Not The Teacher I Have In Mind. The Teacher I Have In Mind Is Something Less Tangible.

When I Began Going To School And Learned To Read, I Encountered Stories Of Other People And Other Lands.

In The Vocabulary Of Certain Radical Theorists Contradictions Are Given The Status Of Some Deadly Disease To Which Their Opponents Alone Can Succumb. But Contradictions Are The Very Stuff Of Life. If There Had Been A Little Dash Of Contradiction Among The Gadarene Swine Some Of Them Might Have Been Saved From Drowning.

My Books Have Done Extremely Well, I Know. But I Don't Honestly Feel Much Different From When I Began To Write. I Still Think We Have A Long Way To Go. I Suppose My Name Means More In Nigeria Today Than It Did Five Years Ago. But I Feel The Job That Literature Should Do In Our Community Has Not Even Started. It's Not Yet Part Of The Life Of The Nation. We Are Still At The Beginning. It's A Big Beginning, Because Now We Are Catching The Next Generation In The Schools. When I Was Their Age, I Had Nothing To Read That Had Any Relevance To My Own Environment.

Man Is Sitting Disconsolate On An Anthill One Morning. God Asks Him What The Matter Is And Man Replies That The Soil Is Too Swampy For The Cultivation Of The Yams Which God Has Directed Him To Grow. God Tells Him To Bring In A Blacksmith To Dry The Soil With His Bellows. The Contribution Of Humanity To This Creation Is So Important. God Could Have Made The World Perfect If He Had Wanted. But He Made It The Way It Is. So That There Is A Constant Need For Us To Discuss And Cooperate To Make It More Habitable, So The Soil Can Yield, You See.

A Man Who Makes Trouble For Others Is Also Making Trouble For Himself.

Thought Provoking

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.

While We Do Our Good Works Let Us Not Forget That The Real Solution Lies In A World In Which Charity Will Have Become Unnecessary.

Writers Don't Give Prescriptions. They Give Headaches!

Thought Provoking

When A New Saying Gets To The Land Of Empty Men, They Lose Their Heads Over It.

The Women Are, Of Course, The Biggest Single Group Of Oppressed People In The World And, If We Are To Believe The Book Of Genesis, The Very Oldest.

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.

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.

Do Not Be In A Hurry To Rush Into The Pleasures Of The World Like The Young Antelope Who Danced Herself Lame When The Main Dance Was Yet To Come.

Age Was Respected Among His People, But Achievement Was Revered. As The Elders Said, If A Child Washed His Hands He Could Eat With Kings.

The Damage Done In One Year Can Sometimes Take Ten Or Twenty Years To Repair.

Thought Provoking

Some People Flinch When You Talk About Art In The Context Of The Needs Of Society Thinking You Are Introducing Something Far Too Common For A Discussion Of Art. Why Should Art Have A Purpose And A Use? Art Shouldn't Be Concerned With Purpose And Reason And Need, They Say. These Are Improper. But From The Very Beginning, It Seems To Me, Stories Have Indeed Been Meant To Be Enjoyed, To Appeal To That Part Of Us Which Enjoys Good Form And Good Shape And Good Sound.

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.

Actually, I Identify With All My Characters, Good And Bad. I Have To Do That In Order To Make Them Genuine. I Have To Understand Them Even If I Don't Approve Of Them. Not Completely - It's Impossible; Complete Identification Is, In Fact, Not Desirable.

You Must Develop The Habit Of Skepticism, Not Swallow Every Piece Of Superstition You Are Told By Witch-doctors And Professors.

Every Lizard Lies On Its Belly, So We Cannot Tell Which Has A Belly-ache

Thought Provoking

There Is That Great Proverb - That Until The Lions Have Their Own Historians, The History Of The Hunt Will Always Glorify The Hunter. That Did Not Come To Me Until Much Later. Once I Realized That, I Had To Be A Writer. I Had To Be That Historian. It's Not One Man's Job. It's Not One Person's Job. But It Is Something We Have To Do, So That The Story Of The Hunt Will Also Reflect The Agony, The Travail - The Bravery, Even, Of The Lions.

I Think Dialects Should Be Left Alone. People Should Write In Whatever Dialect They Feel They Want To Write. In The Fullness Of Time, These Dialects Will Sort Themselves Out.

Whatever Music You Beat On Your Drum There Is Somebody Who Can Dance To It.

People Go To Africa And Confirm What They Already Have In Their Heads And So They Fail To See What Is There In Front Of Them.

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.

The Most Awful Thing About Power Is Not That It Corrupts Absolutely But That It Makes People So Utterly Boring, So Predictable.

A Toad Does Not Run In The Daytime For Nothing

There Is That Great Proverb — That Until The Lions Have Their Own Historians, The History Of The Hunt Will Always Glorify The Hunter.

If You're Rooted To A Spot, You Miss A Lot Of The Grace. So You Keep Moving, And This Is The Way I Think The World's Stories Should Be Told - From Many Different Perspectives.

Do You Blame A Vulture For Perching Over A Carcass?

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.

In Dealing With A Man Who Thinks You Are A Fool, It Is Good Sometimes To Remind Him That You Know What He Knows But Have Chosen To Appear Foolish For The Sake Of Peace.

Thought Provoking

I Don't Want To Be The One To Tell Somebody, You Will Not Make It, Even Though I Know That The Majority Of Those Who Come To Me With Their Manuscripts Are Not Really Good Enough.

People Go To Africa And Confirm What They Already Have In Their Heads And So They Fail To See What Is There In Front Of Them. This Is What People Have Come To Expect. Its Not Viewed As A Serious Continent. Its A Place Of Strange, Bizarre And Illogical Things, Where People Dont Do What Common Sense Demands.

A Man To Whom You Do A Favor Will Not Understand If You Say Nothing, Make No Noise, Just Walk Away. You May Cause More Trouble By Refusing A Bribe Than By Accepting It.

Travellers With Closed Minds Can Tell Us Little Except About Themselves

There Is A Moral Obligation, I Think, Not To Ally Oneself With Power Against The Powerless.

A Debt May Get Mouldy, But It Never Decays.

Once You Allow Yourself To Identify With The People In A Story, Then You Might Begin To See Yourself In That Story Even If On The Surface It's Far Removed From Your Situation.

People Say That If You Find Water Rising Up To Your Ankle, That's The Time To Do Something About It, Not When It's Around Your Neck.

"we Have Heard Stories About White Men Who Make The Powerful Guns And The Strong Drinks And Took Slaves Away Across The Seas, But No One Thought The Stories Were True." [said Obierika]"there Is No Story That Is Not True," Said Uchendu. "the World Has No End, And What Is Good Among One People Is An Abomination With Others. We Have Albinos Among Us. Do You Not Think That They Came To Our Clan By Mistake, That They Have Strayed From Their Way To A Land Where Everybody Is Like Them?"

If I Hold Her Hand She Says, ‘don’t Touch!’ If I Hold Her Foot She Says ‘don’t Touch!’ But When I Hold Her Waist-beads She Pretends Not To Know.

Unoka Went Into An Inner Room And Soon Returned With A Small Wooden Disc Containing A Kola Nut, Some Alligator Pepper And A Lump Of White Chalk. "i Have Kola," He Announced When He Sat Down, And Passed The Disc Over To His Guest. "thank You. He Who Brings Kola Brings Life. But I Think You Ought To Break It," Replied Okoye Passing Back The Disc. "no, It Is For You, I Think," And They Argued Like This For A Few Moments Before Unoka Accepted The Honor Of Breaking The Kola. Okoye, Meanwhile, Took The Lump Of Chalk, Drew Some Lines On The Floor, And Then Painted His Big Toe.

A Man Of Worth Never Gets Up To Unsay What He Said Yesterday.

Thought Provoking

Literature, Whether Handed Down By Word Or Mouth Or In Print, Gives Us A Second Handle On Reality.

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.

To Answer Oppression With Appropriate Resistance Requires Knowledge Of Two Kinds: In The First Place, Self-knowledge By The Victim, Which Means Awareness That Oppression Exists, An Awareness That The Victim Has Fallen From A Great Height Of Glory Or Promise Into The Present Depths; Secondly, The Victim Must Know Who The Enemy Is. He Must Know His Oppressor's Real Name, Not An Alias, A Pseudonym, Or A Nom De Plume!

I'm Very Primitive; I Write With A Pen.

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.

The Trouble With Nigeria Is Simply And Squarely A Failure Of Leadership. There Is Nothing Basically Wrong With The Nigerian Land Or Climate Or Water Or Air Or Anything Else. The Nigerian Problem Is The Unwillingness Or Inability Of Its Leaders To Rise To The Responsibility, To The Challenge Of Personal Example Which Are The Hallmarks Of True Leadership.

A Man Who Calls His Kinsmen To A Feast Does Not Do So To Save Them From Starving. They All Have Food In Their Own Homes. When We Gather Together In The Moonlit Village Ground It Is Not Because Of The Moon. Every Man Can See It In His Own Compound. We Come Together Because It Is Good For Kinsmen To Do So.

I Don't Praise My People. I Am Their Greatest Critic.

Writing Has Always Been A Serious Business For Me. I Felt It Was A Moral Obligation. A Major Concern Of The Time Was The Absence Of The African Voice. Being Part Of That Dialogue Meant Not Only Sitting At The Table But Effectively Telling The African Story From An African Perspective - In Full Earshot Of The World.

When Brothers Fight To Death A Stranger Inherit Their Father’s Estate

What Is Modesty But Inverted Pride?

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.

My Son Even If You Want To Fall, At Least Fall Where Your Bones Can Be Gathered

Thought Provoking

Dancing Is Very Important Nowadays. No Girl Will Look At You If You Can't Dance.

I Am Not An Early-morning Person; I Don't Like To Get Out Of Bed, And So I Don't Begin Writing At Five A.m., Though Some People, I Hear, Do. I Write Once My Day Has Started. And I Can Work Late Into The Night, Also.

If You Don't Like Someone's Story, Write Your Own. If You Don't Like What Somebody Says, Say What It Is You Don't Like.

When A Mad Man Walks Naked, It Is His Kinsmen Who Feel Shame, Not Himself.

Contradictions If Well Understood And Managed Can Spark Off The Fires Of Invention. Orthodoxy Whether Of The Right Or Of The Left Is The Graveyard Of Creativity.

The Problem With Leaderless Uprisings Taking Over Is That You Don't Always Know What You Get At The Other End. If You Are Not Careful You Could Replace A Bad Government With One Much Worse!

A Child Cannot Pay For Its Mother’s Milk.

I Think As You Grow Up And You See Things Which Are Around You And You Ask Questions And You Hear The Answers, Your Situation Becomes More And More Of A Puzzle. Now, Why Is It Like This, Why Are Things Like This And Since Writing Is One Way In Which One Can Ask This Questions And Try To Find These Answers, It Seems To Me A Very Natural Thing To Do, Especially As It Meant Stories Which I Always Found Moving, Almost Unbearably Necessary.

The Emperor Would Prefer The Poet To Keep Away From Politics, The Emperor's Domain, So That He Can Manage Things The Way He Likes.

We Do Not Seek To Hurt Any Man, But If Any Man Seeks To Hurt Us May He Break His Neck.

If I Write Novels In A Country In Which Most Citizens Are Illiterate, Who Then Is My Community?

There Is Nothing To Fear From Someone Who Shouts.

A Pen On Paper Is The Ideal Way For Me. I Am Not Really Very Comfortable With Machines; I Never Learned To Type Very Well.

Almost 30 Years Before Rwanda, Before Darfur, More Than 2 Million People - Mothers, Children, Babies, Civilians - Lost Their Lives As A Result Of The Blatantly Callous And Unnecessary Policies Enacted By The Leaders Of The Federal Government Of Nigeria. It's This Charge That's Dominated The Book's Nigerian Press, So Far As I Can See, The Accusation, On The One Hand, That Awolowo Hatched "a Diabolical Policy To Reduce The Numbers Of His Enemies Significantly Through Starvation - Eliminating Over Two Million People, Mainly Members Of Future Generations.

The Price A World Language Must Be Prepared To Pay Is Submission To Many Different Kinds Of Use.

[would] A Sensible Man Spit Out The Juicy Morsel That Good Fortune Put In His Mouth?

To The Question Of Writing At All We Have Sometimes Been Counselled To Forget It, Or Rather The Writing Of Books. What Is Required, We Are Told, Is Plays And Films. Books Are Out Of Date! The Book Is Dead, Long Live Television! One Question Which Is Not Even Raised Let Alone Considered Is: Who Will Write The Drama And Film Scripts When The Generation That Can Read And Write Has Been Used Up?

I Think Not Just Nigeria But I Think The Whole Of Africa Has To Turn Back To The Rural Areas And That's Where The Majority Of The Citizens Are And That's Where The Engine Of Of Development Has To Be Found.

Nobody Can Teach Me Who I Am. You Can Describe Parts Of Me, But Who I Am - And What I Need - Is Something I Have To Find Out Myself.

Thought Provoking

When I'm Writing, I Really Want To Satisfy Myself. I've Got A Story That I Am Working On And Struggling With, And I Want To Tell It The Most Effective Way I Can. That's Really What I Struggle With. And The Thought Of Who May Be Reading It May Be There Somewhere In The Back Of My Mind - I'll Never Say It's Not There Because I Don't Know - But It's Not Really What I'm Thinking About.

And Theories Are No More Than Fictions Which Help Us To Make Sense Of Experience And Which Are Subject To Disconfirmation When Their Explanations Are No Longer Adequate.

It Is The Story That Owns And Directs Us. It Is The Thing That Makes Us Different From Cattle; It Is The Mark On The Face That Sets One People Apart From Their Neighbors.

The Rural Areas Have Been Deprived By The Cities In The Past. Development Resources And Energy Should Be Directed Where The People Live.

It Is Not Quite True To Say That I Am Not An Advocate Of Writing In African Languages. What I Think Is, One Has To Think About What Is Practicable.

My Parents Were Early Converts To Christianity In My Part Of Nigeria. They Were Not Just Converts; My Father Was An Evangelist, A Religious Teacher. He And My Mother Traveled For Thirty-five Years To Different Parts Of Igboland, Spreading The Gospel.

The Story Of This Man Who Had Killed A Messenger And Hanged Himself Would Make Interesting Reading. One Could Almost Write A Whole Chapter On Him. Perhaps Not A Whole Chapter But A Resonable Paragraph, At Any Rate. There Was So Much Else To Include, And One Must Be Firm In Cutting Out Details. He Had Already Chosen The Title Of The Book, After Much Thought: `the Pacification Of The Primitive Tribes Of The Lower Niger.'

What I Can Say Is That It Was Clear To Many Of Us That An Indigenous African Literary Renaissance Was Overdue. A Major Objective Was To Challenge Stereotypes, Myths, And The Image Of Ourselves And Our Continent, And To Recast Them Through Stories- Prose, Poetry, Essays, And Books For Our Children. That Was My Overall Goal.

I Do Not Think That There Need Be The Conflict Between Books And Videos, That One Would Drive Out The Other. It Certainly Is Possible To Watch The Screen For Some Things And For Others To Sit Down And Read, Because The Screen Is Easier To Do, To Watch Is Easier Than To Read Because You Don't Have To Contemplate Anything. Someone Else Has Done The Work Of Putting It On The Video.

Colonial Rule Means That Power, Initiative Is Taken Away From You By Somebody Else Who Makes Your Decisions. If That Goes On Long Enough, Beyond One Generation, Then The Habit Of Self-rule Is Forgotten. People Are No Longer Able To Realize What It Means. To Be Dependant For A Hundred Years! And Suddenly When This Thing Ends There Is Nobody Who Actually Knows How To Set About Running The Country.

The White Man Is Very Clever. He Came Quietly And Peaceably With His Religion. We Were Amused At His Foolishness And Allowed Him To Stay. Now He Has Won Our Brothers, And Our Clan Can No Longer Act Like One. He Has Put A Knife On The Things That Held Us Together And We Have Fallen Apart.

If The Clan Did Not Exact Punishment For An Offense Against The Great Goddess, Her Wrath Was Loosed On All The Land And Not Just On The Offender. As The Elders Said, If One Finger Brought Oil It Soiled All The Others.

A Man's Life From Birth To Death Was A Series Of Transition Rites Which Brought Him Nearer And Nearer To His Ancestors.

No Matter How Prosperous A Man Was, If He Was Unable To Rule His Women And His Children (and Especially His Women) He Was Not Really A Man.

I Think Africa Is Slowly Learning - And Painfully - That Importance Of Insisting On Responsible Leadership. It Will Come Eventually, And We May Be Impatient And Rightly So, Because It Is Not Coming Fast Enough. But That Is The Way To Go.

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.

Many Writers Can't Make A Living. So To Be Able To Teach How To Write Is Valuable To Them. But I Don't Really Know About Its Value To The Student. I Don't Mean It's Useless. But I Wouldn't Have Wanted Anyone To Teach Me How To Write.

Real Tragedy Is Never Resolved. It Goes On Hopelessly For Ever.

When A Coward Sees A Man He Can Beat He Becomes Hungry For A Fight.

We Don't Want To Be Simply Wandering About Without Some Kind Of Reason, We Want Our Presence Here To Have A Purpose, And That We Are Not Going To End Here, We Are Going To Proceed Somewhere Else, And Also That We Didn't Begin Here, That We Began Somewhere Else And All That Living, All That Elaborate Account Of Our Presence Seems To Be Quite Basic To Our Nature And So This Is What Literacy Taps Into.

An Artist In My View Is Always Afraid Of Extremists; He Is Always Afraid Of Those Who Claim To Have Found The Ultimate Solution To Any Question.

The Language Of Young Men Is Pull Down And Destroy; But An Old Man Speaks Of Conciliation.

Thought Provoking

A Man Who Lived On The Banks Of The Niger Should Not Wash His Hands With Spittle.

Only The Story Can Continue Beyond The War And The Warrior. The Story Outlives The Sound Of The War Drum... The Story Is Our Escort. Without It We Are Blind... It Is The Thing That Sets Us Apart From Cattle.

Those Whose Kernels Were Cracked By Benevolent Spirit Should Not Forget To Be Humble.

I Prefer To Go On Trying All Kinds Of Things, Not To Be Told, This Is The Way It Is Done.

Women And Music Should Not Be Dated.

A Man Who Pays Respect To The Great Paves The Way For His Own Greatness

I Think Writers Are Not Only Writers, They Are Also Citizens.

Among The Igbo The Art Of Conversation Is Regarded Very Highly, And Proverbs Are The Palm-oil With Which Words Are Eaten.

Whenever I Try To Do Anything On A Typewriter, It's Like Having This Machine Between Me And The Words; What Comes Out Is Not Quite What Would Come Out If I Were Scribbling.

Let The Kite Perch And Let The Eagle Perch Too – If One Says No To The Other, Let His Wing Break.

You Cannot Plant Greatness As You Plant Yams Or Maize. Who Ever Planted An Iroko Tree — The Greatest Tree In The Forest? You May Collect All The Iroko Seeds In The World, Open The Soil And Put Them There. It Will Be In Vain. The Great Tree Chooses Where To Grow And We Find It There, So It Is With The Greatness In Men.

There Is No Story That Is Not True.

Things Fall Apart Important

An Artist, In My Understanding Of The Word, Should Side With The People Against The Emperor That Oppresses His Or Her People.

I Find Nigeria Very Frustrating. I Am Not Alone In This. There Are Many Nigerians Abroad. As You Know, The Brain Drain Is Just Incredible. And When We Talk To One Another And There Is A Certain Sense Of Frustration And But I Struggle Not To Let The Frustration Degenerate Into Dispair.

I Did Not Think Of Writing As A Career And I Don't Think That I Did This Ever Really, But I Think Of Writing As Something That I Could Do, I Should Do Alongside Whatever Else I Was Doing. It Simply Grew On Me.

Africa Is People" May Seem Too Simple And Too Obvious To Some Of Us. But I Have Found In The Course Of My Travels Through The World That The Most Simple Things Can Still Givwe Us A Lot Of Trouble, Even The Brightest Among Us: This Is Particularly So In Matters Concerning Africa.

We Have Heard Stories About White Men Who Make The Powerful Guns And The Strong Drinks And Took Slaves Away Across The Seas, But No One Thought The Stories Were True.

People Create Stories Create People; Or Rather Stories Create People Create Stories.

Each Of My Books Is Different. Deliberately... I Wanted To Create My Society, My People, In Their Fullness.

Those Who Are Talking Sharia In Nigeria Are Really Just Politicians Exploiting What They Think Is Available. But If It Should Turn Out That There Are In Fact Whole Sections Of The Country Which Believe That It Is Legitimate To Chop Off Peoples Hands Because They Stole A Hen - If That Should Really Turn Out To Be The Genuine Belief Of Responsible, Educated People In The North Than I Would Say There Is No Chance. But I Do Not Believe That Is The Case. The Sharia Was Always There But It Was Never Force Onto Non-muslims And It Was Not Ever Applied In The Area Of Criminal Law.

I Tell My Students, It's Not Difficult To Identify With Somebody Like Yourself, Somebody Next Door Who Looks Like You. What's More Difficult Is To Identify With Someone You Don't See, Who's Very Far Away, Who's A Different Color, Who Eats A Different Kind Of Food. When You Begin To Do That Then Literature Is Really Performing Its Wonders.

There Is A Certain Increase In The Importance I Assign To Women In Getting Us Out Of The Mess That We Are In, Which Is A Reflection Of The Role Of Women In My Traditional Culture - That They Do Not Interfere In Politics Until Men Really Make Such A Mess That The Society Is Unable To Go Backward Or Forward. Then Women Will Move In.

A Chief Does Not Hurry.

We Live In A Society That Is In Transition From Oral To Written. There Are Oral Stories That Are Still There, Not Exactly In Their Full Magnificence, But Still Strong In Their Differentness From Written Stories. Each Mode Has Its Ways And Methods And Rules. They Can Reinforce Each Other; This Is The Advantage My Generation Has - We Can Bring To The Written Story Something Of That Energy Of The Story Told By Word Of Mouth.

Men Have Learned To Shoot Without Missing Their Mark And I Have Learned To Fly Without Perching On A Twig.

One Reason Why I Am Quite Angry With What Is Happening In Nigeria Today Is That Everything Has Collapsed. If I Decide To Go Back Now, There Will Be So Many Problems - Where Will I Find The Physical Therapy And Other Things That I Now Require?

A Coward May Cover The Ground With His Words But When The Time Comes To Fight He Runs Away.

This Is Why I Find Racism Impossible, Because This Is Against Humanity.

An Angry Man Is Always A Stupid Man.

He Who Fights For A Ne'er-do-well Has Nothing To Show For It Except A Head Covered In Earth And Grime.

If You Have Leaders Who Are Prepared To Incite Group Against Group It Is Very Easy To Manufacture Reasons And Excuses.

If You Don't Like Someone's Story, Write Your Own.

Thought Provoking

It Always Surprised Him When He Thought Of It Later That He Did Not Sink Under The Load Of Despair.

When A Tradition Gathers Enough Strength To Go On For Centuries, You Don't Just Turn It Off One Day.

When I Think Of The Standing, The Importance And The Erudition Of All These People Who See Nothing About Racism In Heart Of Darkness, I'm Convinced That We Must Really Be Living In Different Worlds.

When A Man Is At Peace With His Gods And Ancestors, His Harvest Will Be Good Or Bad According To The Strength Of His Arm.

You Might As Well Say That The Woman Lies On Top Of The Man When They Are Making The Babies.

A Goat Does Not Eat Into A Hen's Stomach No Matter How Friendly The Two May Be.

There Must Be Areas In Which A Particular Character Does Not Represent You.

Children Are Very Fair Minded, They Really Are.

Nigeria Is What It Is Because Its Leaders Are Not What They Should Be.

Nigeria Independence

It Is Praiseworthy To Be Brave And Fearless, But Sometimes It Is Better To Be A Coward. We Often Stand In The Compound Of A Coward To Point At The Ruins Where A Brave Man Used To Live.

Thought Provoking

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.

She Pouted Her Lips Like A Gun In My Face.

Serious And Good Art Has Always Existed To Help, To Serve, Humanity. Not To Indict.

What A Country Needs To Do Is Be Fair To All Its Citizens - Whether People Are Of A Different Ethnicity Or Gender.

When The Moon Is Shining The Cripple Becomes Hungry For A Walk

Stories Serve The Purpose Of Consolidating Whatever Gains People Or Their Leaders Have Made Or Imagine They Have Made In Their Existing Journey Thorough The World.

Every Generation Must Find Its Mission And Fulfill It, As Fanon Said - Or Betray It. So It Is Not Something That You Can Write Up On The Wall, Saying This Is What Has To Be Done. Every Generation Has To Discover What It Needs To Do.

When There Is A Big Tree Small Ones Climb On Its Back To Reach The Sun.

I Think Back To The Old People I Knew When I Was Growing Up, And They Always Seemed Larger Than Life.

Nigeria Has Had A Complicated Colonial History. My Work Has Examined That Part Of Our Story Extensively.

Nigeria Independence

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.

There Are People Who Say That If You Are Told That Your House Has Fallen You Don't Ask What About The Ceiling Or What About The Windows. The Main Thing Is That This House, Africa, Has Fallen. Literature Is Just One Aspect, Pick Any Aspect Of The Situation.

As Our Fathers Said, You Can Tell A Ripe Corn By Its Look.

My Weapon Is Literature

You Don't Ever Want To Say To A Young Person, You Can't, Or, You Are No Good. Some People Might Be Able To Do It, But I Don't Think I Am A Policeman For Literature. So I Tell Them, Sweat It Out, Do Your Best.

Children Are Young, But They're Not Naive. And They're Honest. They're Not Going To Keep Wide Awake If The Story Is Boring. When They Get Excited You Can See It In Their Eyes.

We Live In A Sea Of General Ideas, So That's Not A Novel, Since There Are So Many General Ideas. But The Moment A Particular Idea Is Linked To A Character, It's Like An Engine Moves It. Then You Have A Novel Underway.

In Fact, I Thought That Christianity Was Very A Good And A Very Valuable Thing For Us. But After A While, I Began To Feel That The Story That I Was Told About This Religion Wasn't Perhaps Completely Whole, That Something Was Left Out.

Mr. Brown Had Thought Of Nothing But Numbers. He Should Have Known That The Kingdom Of God Did Not Depend On Large Crowds. Our Lord Himself Stressed The Importance Of Fewness. Narrow Is The Way And Few The Number. To Fill The Lord's Holy Temple With An Idolatrous Crowd Clamoring For Signs Was A Folly Of Everlasting Consequence. Our Lord Used The Whip Only Once In His Life - To Drive The Crowd Away From His Church.

One Of The Truest Tests Of Integrity Is Its Blunt Refusal To Be Compromised.

Men Had Taken Greater Blows: That Was What Made A Man A Man. For Did They Not Say That A Man Is Like A Funeral Ram Which Must Take Whatever Beating Comes To It Without Opening Its Mouth; That The Silent Tremor Of Pain Down Its Body Alone Must Tell Of Its Suffering?

You Do Not Know Me,’ Said Tortoise. ‘i Am A Changed Man. I Have Learned That A Man Who Makes Trouble For Others Makes Trouble For Himself.

Trending Author

Chiang Kai-shek

James Gandolfini

Joseph Pulitzer

Category