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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?

-Chinua Achebe

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Men Had Taken Greater

Chinua Achebe

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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?

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

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.

Nobody Can Teach Me Who I Am.

Women And Music Should Not Be Dated.

There Is Nothing To Fear From Someone Who Shouts.

There Is No Story That Is Not True.

Things Fall Apart Important

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.

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

Thought Provoking

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

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.

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.

"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?"

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

What Is Modesty But Inverted Pride?

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

Thought Provoking

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.

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.

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.

Travellers With Closed Minds Can Tell Us Little Except About Themselves

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's So Easy To Get Into The Same Routine. A Novel Every Two Years; Perhaps, Improving Technique. But I'm Not Interested In That. I'm Interested In Doing Something Fundamentally Important--and Therefore, It Needs Time. And What I've Been Doing, Really, Is Avoiding This Pressure To Get Into The Habit Of One Novel A Year. This Is What Is Expected Of Novelists. And I Have Never Been Really Too Much Concerned With Doing What Is Expected Of Novelists, Or Writers, Or Artists. I Want To Do What I Believe Is Important.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

When Mother-cow Is Chewing Grass Its Young Ones Watch Its Mouth

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I Grew Up Recognizing That There Was Nobody To Give Me Any Advice And That You Do Your Best And If It's Not Good Enough, Someday You Will Come To Terms With That.

Not Good Enough

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.

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

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.

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

Thought Provoking

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.

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.

When I Was In England, I Had Seen Advertisements About Typing Agencies; I Had Learned That If You Really Want To Make A Good Impression, You Should Have Your Manuscript Well Typed.

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.

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.

The World Is Large,” Said Okonkwo. “i Have Even Heard That In Some Tribes A Man’s Children Belong To His Wife And Her Family.” “that Cannot Be,” Said Machi. “you Might As Well Say That The Woman Lies On Top Of The Man When They Are Making The Babies.

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.

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.

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

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

Failure Of Leadership

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

A Budding Writer Wants To Be Encouraged.

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.

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.

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

She Pouted Her Lips Like A Gun In My Face.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Thought Provoking

What You Must Accept Is That Your Life Is Not Going To Be The Same While You Are Writing.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

A Debt May Get Mouldy, But It Never Decays.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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?

Living Fire Begets Cold, Impotent Ash.

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.

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 Toad Does Not Run In The Daytime For Nothing

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

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

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 One Finger Brings Oil It Soils The Others.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Impatient Idealist Says: 'give Me A Place To Stand And I Shall Move The Earth.' But Such A Place Does Not Exist. We All Have To Stand On The Earth Itself And Go With Her At Her Pace.

Do You Blame A Vulture For Perching Over A Carcass?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Thought Provoking

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

I Think The Language That We Use In Dealing With One Another Is Very Important. And Even If I Am Called Upon To Bring Out Some Money To Support A Regime, And I Am Entitled To Say I Do Not Like What That Regime Does And Obviously I Am Not Going To Put Money There - You Cannot Really Say This Is Wrong Or This Is Unreasonable.

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.

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

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.

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

Thought Provoking

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!

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

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

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

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.

My Weapon Is Literature

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 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.

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

Nigeria Independence

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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'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.

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

Art Should Be On The Side Of Humanity.

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

Thought Provoking

A Chief Does Not Hurry.

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