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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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Americans, It Seems To

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.

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

Nigeria Independence

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

When The British Came To Ibo Land, For Instance, At The Beginning Of The 20th Century, And Defeated The Men In Pitched Battles In Different Places, And Set Up Their Administrations, The Men Surrendered. And It Was The Women Who Led The First Revolt.

The Triumph Of The Written Word Is Often Attained When The Writer Achieves Union And Trust With The Reader, Who Then Becomes Ready To Be Drawn Into Unfamiliar Territory, Walking In Borrowed Literary Shoes So To Speak, Toward A Deeper Understanding Of Self Or Society, Or Of Foreign Peoples, Cultures, And Situations.

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.

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.

A Disease That Has Never Been Seen Before Cannot Be Cured With Every-day Herbs.

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.

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.

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.

Art Should Be On The Side Of Humanity.

Just Think Of The Work You've Set Yourself To Do, And Do It As Well As You Can.

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

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.

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

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.

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

As A Rule I Don't Like Suffering To No Purpose. Suffering Should Be Creative, Should Give Birth To Something Good And Lovely.

What Has Happened To Africa Is Very Severe. We Are Talking About The Collapse Of This And The Collapse Of That, Of Good Government, Of The Economy Particularly. And This Has Hit Education Badly. The News You Get From The Universities In Nigeria Is Often Appalling. I Don't Think A Lot Of It Gets Out. There Is The Obsession With Cults And All Kinds Of Dreadful Things Going On And All This Is Taking Its Toll And It Is Not Surprising That Quality Of Students And Graduates Who Come Out Is Not Good. It Will Not Be Surprising If This Shows In The Quality Of Work They Do.

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

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

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 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 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.

Travellers With Closed Minds Can Tell Us Little Except About Themselves

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.

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.

He Is A Fool Who Treats His Brother Worse Than A Stranger.

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The Writer Cannot Expect To Be Excused From The Task Of Reeducation And Regeneration That Must Be Done. In Fact, He Should March Right In Front.

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

I Have Found That I Work Best When I Am At Home In Nigeria. But One Learns To Work In Other Places.

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 Price A World Language Must Be Prepared To Pay Is Submission To Many Different Kinds Of Use. The African Writer Should Aim To Use English In A Way That Brings Out His Message Best Without Altering The Language To The Extent That Its Value As A Medium Of International Exchange Will Be Lost. He Should Aim At Fashioning Out An English Which Is At Once Universal And Able To Carry His Peculiar Experience.

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

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

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?

I Teach Literature. That's Easy For Me. Take Someone Else's Work And Talk About It.

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

The Man That Brings Ant-infested Faggots Into His Hut Should Not Grumble When Lizards Begin To Pay Him A Visit.

The Sun Will Shine On Those Who Stand Before It Shines On Those Who Kneel Under Them.

Democracy Is Not Something You Put Away For Ten Years, And Then In The 11th Year You Wake Up And Start Practicing Again. We Have To Begin To Learn To Rule Ourselves Again.

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.

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.

If One Finger Brings Oil It Soils The Others.

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.'

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.

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

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No Man However Great Is Greater Than His People

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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!

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.

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.

I'm Amazed When I Think About Students Today. They Know From Day One What They Are Going To Be. We Didn't. We Just Coasted. We Just Knew That Things Would Work Out.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Even The Village Rain-maker No Longer Claimed To Be Able To Intervene. He Could Not Stop The Rain Now, Just As He Would Not Attempt To Start It In The Heart Of The Dry Season, Without Serious Danger To His Own Health.

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.

I Have So Many Ideas; There Are So Many Things That Need To Be Done, So Many Possibilities, You Know; One Is Terribly Excited, But At The Same Time, You're Almost Confused, Because You Don't Know Where To Begin.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Ogbuef Ezedudu,who Was The Oldest Man In The Village, Was Telling Two Other Men When They Came To Visit Him That The Punishment For Breaking The Peace Of Ani Had Become Very Mild In Their Clan. "it Has Not Always Been So," He Said. "my Father Told Me That He Had Been Told That In The Past A Man Who Broke The Peace Was Dragged On The Ground Through The Village Until He Died. But After A While This Custom Was Stopped Because It Spoiled The Peace Which It Was Meant To Preserve.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Toad Does Not Run In The Daytime For Nothing

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.

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.

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.

World Suffering

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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.

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.

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

In Nigeria, There Is Energy, Whether It Is Lagos, Which Is Sheer Anarchy, But It Is Not Lethargic. It Is Strong, Even Aggressive And If That Energy Could Be Directed To Work It Will Produce Really Enormous Results.

The Singer Should Sing Well Even If It Is Merely To Himself, Rather Than Dance Badly For The Whole World.

If You Only Hear One Side Of The Story, You Have No Understanding At All.

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

I Think That Is One Of The First Things That I Got Clear In My Mind When I Began To Play Around With Fiction, That I Had To Find A Language And It Was Not In Existance At The Time. You Have Put It Very Well - It Wasn't To Be Taken For Granted. You Had To Go On And Search Until You Found A Way Through The Conversation Of English And Igbo. The Two Languages Stuck Into Each Other And Tried To Find A Way To Express Through One, The Medium Of The Thoughts. That's A Very Exciting Thing To Do, A Very Difficult Thing To Do.

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

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

Thought Provoking

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

Once A Novel Gets Going And I Know It Is Viable, I Don't Then Worry About Plot Or Themes. These Things Will Come In Almost Automatically Because The Characters Are Now Pulling The Story.

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.

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

Thought Provoking

Generally, I Don't Attempt To Produce A Certain Number Of Words A Day. The Discipline Is To Work Whether You Are Producing A Lot Or Not, Because The Day You Produce A Lot Is Not Necessarily The Day You Do Your Best Work. So It's Trying To Do It As Regularly As You Can Without Making It - Without Imposing Too Rigid A Timetable On Your Self. That Would Be My Ideal.

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.

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.

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

It Is Only The Story...that Saves Our Progeny From Blundering Like Blind Beggars Into The Spikes Of The Cactus Fence.the Story Is Our Escort;without It,we Are Blind.does The Blind Man Own His Escort?no,neither Do We The Story;rather,it Is The Story That Owns Us.

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

Living Fire Begets Cold, Impotent Ash.

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

One Would Think He Never Sucked At His Mother’s Breast.

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.

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.

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

I Do Not Think That There Is Any Time In Our History When Things Were Perfect. I Do Not Expect Such Times In The Near Future Either. But I Think Every Generation Has To Examine What Needs To Be Done, What Belongs To Its Peace And Proceed. And So What Needs To Be Done Will Change With Time Depending On The Conditions, Whatever The Conditions Happen To Be. And They Will Not Be The Same For Generation After Generation.

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

In My Definition I Am A Protest Writer, With Restraint.

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

Thought Provoking

A Functioning, Robust Democracy Requires A Healthy Educated, Participatory Followership, And An Educated, Morally Grounded Leadership.

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.

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

What Kind Of Power Was It If It Would Never Be Used?

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.

But I Liked Yeats! That Wild Irishman. I Really Loved His Love Of Language, His Flow. His Chaotic Ideas Seemed To Me Just The Right Thing For A Poet. Passion! He Was Always On The Right Side. He May Be Wrongheaded, But His Heart Was Always On The Right Side. He Wrote Beautiful Poetry.

The Ordinary Nigerians Have Lived As Neighbors Down The Millennia. I Was Talking About The British Who Came And Merged A Whole Number Of Mini States And Big States Into One Unit. But Those People Were Always There, And They Always Managed To Live Side By Side With Their Neighbours. So They Were Not Owned Or Run By One Kingdom. It Was Not Practically Impossible For These People When They Have Different Languages And Religions To Be Neighbors. So It Is That Habit Of Neighbourliness Which Is Destroyed And Put Under Great Strain Again And Again When You Have Things Like Massacres.

People From Different Parts Of The World Can Respond To The Same Story If It Says Something To Them About Their Own History And Their Own Experience.

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.

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.

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 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!

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.

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

A Boy Sent By His Father To Steal Does Not Go Stealthily But Breaks The Door With His Feet.

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.

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.

At The Most One Could Say That His Chi Or ... Personal God Was Good. But The Ibo People Have A Proverb That When A Man Says Yes His Chi Says Yes Also. Okonkwo Said Yes Very Strongly; So His Chi Agreed.

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

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.

Anybody Who Wants To Rule A Group Will Find That If This Group Is Quarreling Among Themselves They Leave You Alone.

After A War Life Catches Desperately At Passing Hints Of Normalcy Like Vines Entwining A Hollow Twig.

It Is Difficult To Express The Reality Of Ibo Society In Classical English.

I Think An Artist, In My Definition Of That Word, Would Not Be Someone Who Takes Sides With The Emperor Against His Powerless Subjects. That's Different From Prescribing A Way In Which A Writer Should Write.

I'm A Practised Writer Now. But When I Began, I Had No Idea What This Was Going To Be. I Just Knew That There Was Something Inside Me That Wanted Me To Tell Who I Was, And That Would Have Come Out Even If I Didn't Want It.

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

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.

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.

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

A Chief Does Not Hurry.

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

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.

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.

My Weapon Is Literature

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

It Has Always Been Quite Apparent To Me That No Important Story Can Fail To Tell Us Something Of Value To Us.

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.

What Really Worries Me Is That Those Who Are In Positions Of Power Are Not Really Affected By What We Are Writing. In The Moral Dialogue You Want To Start, You Really Want To Involve The Leaders. People Ask Me: "why Were You So Bold As To Publish A Man Of The People? How Did You Think The Government Was Going To Take It? You Didn't Know There Was Going To Be A Coup?" I Said Rather Flippantly That Nobody Was Going To Read It Anyway, So I Wasn't Likely To Be Fired From My Official Position. It's A Distressing Thought That We Cannot Engage Our Leaders In The Kind Of Moral Debate We Need.

Do You Blame A Vulture For Perching Over A Carcass?

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.

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.

The Reality Of Today, Different As It Is From The Reality Of My Society One Hundred Years Ago, Is And Can Be Important If We Have The Energy And The Inclination To Challenge It, To Go Out And Engage With Its Peculiarities, With The Things That We Do Not Understand. The Real Danger Is The Tendency To Retreat Into The Obvious, The Tendency To Be Frightened By The Richness Of The World And To Clutch What We Always Have Understood.

An Angry Man Is Always A Stupid Man.

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.

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.

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.

Charity . . . Is The Opium Of The Privileged.

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

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

Nigeria Independence

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.

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.

A Debt May Get Mouldy, But It Never Decays.

We Shall All Live. We Pray For Life, Children, A Good Harvest And Happiness. You Will Have What Is Good For You And I Will Have What Is Good For Me. Let The Kite Perch And Let The Egret Perch Too. If One Says No To The Other, Let His Wing Break.

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.

Now One Of The Changes That Must Come To Africa Is The Idea Of Limited Rule, I Mean In Term Of How Long One Leader Can Stay In Power. The Era Of President For Life Is Not Gone Yet But It Is On Its Way Out And That Is One Of The Problems With Mugabe And Others.

I Try As Hard As Possible Not To Be Pessimistic Because I Have Never Thought Or Believed That Creating A Nigerian Nation Would Be Easy; I Have Always Known That It Was Going To Be A Very Tough Job. But I Never Really Thought That It Would Be This Tough. And What's Going On Now, Which Is A Subjection Of This Potentially Great Country To A Clique Of Military Adventurers And A Political Class That They Have Completely Corrupted - This Is Really Quite Appalling. The Suffering That They Have Unleashed On Millions Of People Is Quite Intolerable.

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

There Is No Story That Is Not True, [...] The World Has No End, And What Is Good Among One People Is An Abomination With Others.

If The Economy Of A Country Collapses Completely And The Hospitals Are No Longer Able To Function As Hospitals, It Will Be Very Difficult To Tell Every Doctor To Stay Home To Work Without Drugs, To Work Without Equipment. You Might Tell Some To Stay But There A Lot Of Young People Who Are At The Beginning Of Their Careers Who Would Be Very Difficult To Persuade.

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.

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.

There Is Something About Important Stories That Is Not Just The Message, But Also The Way That Message Is Conveyed, The Arrangement Of The Words, The Felicity Of The Language. So It's Really A Balance Between Your Commitment, Whether It's Political Or Economic Or Whatever, And Your Craft As An Artist.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Women And Music Should Not Be Dated.

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

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

In America There Is Really Very Little Knowledge Of The Literature Of The Rest Of The World. Of The Literature Of Latin America, Yes, But That's Not All That Different In Inspiration From That Of America, Or Of Europe. One Must Go Further. You Don't Even Have To Go Too Far In Terms Of Geography - You Can Start With The Native Americans And Listen To Their Poetry.

Native American

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

Storytellers Are A Threat. They Threaten All Champions Of Control, They Frighten Usurpers Of The Right-to-freedom Of The Human Spirit -- In State, In Church Or Mosque, In Party Congress, In The University Or Wherever.

There Are Things The Story Must Have Or Else Look Incomplete. And These Will Almost Automatically Present Themselves. When They Don't, You Are In Trouble And Then The Novel Stops.

Writing Is Like Wrestling; You Are Wrestling With Ideas And With The Story. There Is A Lot Of Energy Required. At The Same Time, It Is Exciting. So It Is Both Difficult And Easy. What You Must Accept Is That Your Life Is Not Going To Be The Same While You Are Writing. I Have Said In The Kind Of Exaggerated Manner Of Writers And Prophets That Writing, For Me, Is Like Receiving A Term Of Imprisonment-you Know That's What You're In For, For Whatever Time It Takes.

Difficult And Easy

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.

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.

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.

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.

There Is No Story That Is Not True.

Things Fall Apart Important

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.

A Child Cannot Pay For Its Mother’s Milk.

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.

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.

If I Say Look Unless You Change Your Leaders I Will Not Give You Any Aid, You Are Likely To Have People Who Say: "to The Hell With You, We Will Struggle On The Way But We Will Do It". Therefore What I Am Saying Is - And I Do Not Whether It Is Coming Through Clearly - There Has To Be A Lot Of Care Exercised By The People Who Are In The Position To Give Or Withhold Assistance: If They Start Throwing Their Weight Around, Using Extreme Language, Seeming To Order Other Nations To Do Their Bidding, Then There Will Not Be A Good Result, It Will Not Be Done.

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

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

Thought Provoking

...when We Are Comfortable And Inattentive, We Run The Risk Of Committing Grave Injustices Absentmindedly.

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.

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.

There Is Nothing To Fear From Someone Who Shouts.

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