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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 Books Are Out Of Date!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?

-Chinua Achebe

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To The Question Of

Chinua Achebe

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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 Books Are Out Of Date!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?

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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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

A Budding Writer Wants To Be Encouraged.

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.

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.

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

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

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

What Is Modesty But Inverted Pride?

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.

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.

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

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

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

No Man However Great Is Greater Than His People

Thought Provoking

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

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

A Toad Does Not Run In The Daytime For Nothing

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Thought Provoking

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

Things Fall Apart Important

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

Nigeria Independence

What A Man Does Not Know Is Greater Than He.

Thought Provoking

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

"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."

We Know The Potentiality Of Nigeria And The Talent And The Resources And To See It Having No Effect On The Lives Of The People, On The Infrastructure, The Roads, The Hospitals, The Schools, Seeing No Effect Of These Talents, These Recourses Is Very Frustrating. But It Is The Result Of The Damage That Was Done To The Country, Especially During The Various Military Regimes.

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

"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?"

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.

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.

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

Thought Provoking

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

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

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

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.

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

Thought Provoking

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.

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

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.

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

Thought Provoking

When 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.

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

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

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

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

Thought Provoking

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.'

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 No Story That Is Not True.

Things Fall Apart Important

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 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.

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

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

Thought Provoking

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

My Weapon Is Literature

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.

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.

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

Thought Provoking

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

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.

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

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

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

A Child Cannot Pay For Its Mother’s Milk.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

It Is 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

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

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!

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.

Nobody Can Teach Me Who I Am.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Art Should Be On The Side Of Humanity.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Travellers With Closed Minds Can Tell Us Little Except About Themselves

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Thought Provoking

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

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

Thought Provoking

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?

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.

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.

Mosquito [...] Had Asked Ear To Marry Him, Whereupon Ear Fell On The Floor In Uncontrollable Laughter. "how Much Longer Do You Think You Will Live?" She Asked. "you Are Already A Skeleton." Mosquito Went Away Humiliated, And Any Time He Passed Her Way He Told Ear That He Was Still Alive.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I Don't Like To See Mistakes On The Typewriter. I Like A Perfect Script. On The Typewriter I Will Sometimes Leave A Phrase That Is Not Right, Not What I Want, Simply Because To Change It Would Be A Bit Messy.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Thought Provoking

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

She Pouted Her Lips Like A Gun In My Face.

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 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.

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

An Angry Man Is Always A Stupid Man.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Procrastination Is A Lazy Man's Apology.

Procrastination

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

A Debt May Get Mouldy, But It Never Decays.

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

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.

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.

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