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I'm Sure If One Turned One's Mind Back From Grandiose Faults To What Is Happening To The Average Man Or Woman Or Child In The Rural Areas, We Will Probably Find That's Where The Energy For Development Is.

-Chinua Achebe

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I'm Sure If One

Chinua Achebe

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I'm Sure If One Turned One's Mind Back From Grandiose Faults To What Is Happening To The Average Man Or Woman Or Child In The Rural Areas, We Will Probably Find That's Where The Energy For Development Is.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

"you Sound As If You Question The Authority And The Decision Of The Oracle, Who Said He Should Die." "i Do Not. Why Should I? But The Oracle Did Not Ask Me To Carry Out Its Decision." [...] "the Earth Cannot Punish Me For Obeying Her Mesenger," Okonkwo Said. "a Child's Fingers Are Not Scalded By A Piece Of Hot Yam Which Its Mother Puts Into Its Palm."

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.

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.

What A Man Does Not Know Is Greater Than He.

Thought Provoking

A Kinsman In Trouble Had To Be Saved, Not Blamed; Anger Against A Brother Was Felt In The Flesh, Not In The Bone.

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.

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

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

A Debt May Get Mouldy, But It Never Decays.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

I'm Sure If One Turned One's Mind Back From Grandiose Faults To What Is Happening To The Average Man Or Woman Or Child In The Rural Areas, We Will Probably Find That's Where The Energy For Development Is.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

As Long As One People Sit On Another And Are Deaf To Their Cry, So Long Will Understanding And Peace Elude All Of Us.

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.

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.

Perhaps Down In His Heart Okonkwo Was Not A Cruel Man. But His Whole Life Was Dominated By Fear, The Fear Of Failure And Of Weakness. It Was Deeper And More Intimate That The Fear Of Evil And Capricious Gods And Of Magic, The Fear Of The Forest, And Of The Forces Of Nature, Malevolent, Red In Tooth And Claw. Okonkwo’s Fear Was Greater Than These. It Was Not External But Lay Deep Within Himself.

When An Old Man Dies, A Library Burns To The Ground.

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.

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.

Writers Don't Give Prescriptions. They Give Headaches!

Thought Provoking

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.

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

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.

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.

A Toad Does Not Run In The Daytime For Nothing

A Man Who Does Not Lick His Lips, Can He Blame The Harmattan For Drying Them?

Living Fire Begets Cold, Impotent Ash.

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

Thought Provoking

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.

What Is Modesty But Inverted Pride?

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

When We Hear A House Has Fallen Do We Ask If The Ceiling Fell With It?

Thought Provoking

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.

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

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.

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

A Budding Writer Wants To Be Encouraged.

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

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.

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

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.

Procrastination Is A Lazy Man's Apology.

Procrastination

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

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 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.

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.

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!

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

She Pouted Her Lips Like A Gun In My Face.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

"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?"

Travellers With Closed Minds Can Tell Us Little Except About Themselves

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

My Weapon Is Literature

Do You Blame A Vulture For Perching Over A Carcass?

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.

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

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.

The Trouble With Nigeria Is Simply And Squarely A Failure Of Leadership.

Failure Of Leadership

Nobody Can Teach Me Who I Am.

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.

An Old Woman Is Always Uneasy When Dry Bones Are Mentioned In A Proverb

Things Fall Apart Important

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

Women And Music Should Not Be Dated.

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

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.

If A Child Washed His Hands, He Could Eat With Kings.

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

There Is No Story That Is Not True.

Things Fall Apart Important

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.

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.

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

The World Is Like A Mask Dancing. If You Want To See It Well, You Do Not Stand In One Place.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

I Know That An Important Message Is Not A Novel. To Say That We Should All Be Kind To Our Neighbors Is An Important Statement; It's Not A Novel.

A Chief Does Not Hurry.

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.

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.

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

Art Should Be On The Side Of Humanity.

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.

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.

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.

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

Thought Provoking

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

Thought Provoking

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

Thought Provoking

Charity . . . Is The Opium Of The Privileged.

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?

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

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.

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.

If Someone Said, I Want To Translate Your Novel Into Igbo, I Would Say, Go Ahead. But When I Write In The Igbo Language, I Write My Own Dialect. I Write Some Poetry In That Dialect.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.'

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.

An Angry Man Is Always A Stupid Man.

A Child Cannot Pay For Its Mother’s Milk.

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