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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.

-Chinua Achebe

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Unoka Went Into An

Chinua Achebe

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Failure Of Leadership

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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

A Child Cannot Pay For Its Mother’s Milk.

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.

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

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.'

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Nigeria Independence

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

My Weapon Is Literature

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I 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.

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

Women And Music Should Not Be Dated.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

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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.

Children Are Very Fair Minded, They Really Are.

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

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

Procrastination Is A Lazy Man's Apology.

Procrastination

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.

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!

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Thought Provoking

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

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

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

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

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.

What Is Modesty But Inverted Pride?

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

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.

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.

"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."

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

A Budding Writer Wants To Be Encouraged.

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

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

Do You Blame A Vulture For Perching Over A Carcass?

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

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

Things Fall Apart Important

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

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

Thought Provoking

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

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

There Is No Story That Is Not True.

Things Fall Apart Important

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.

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

A Debt May Get Mouldy, But It Never Decays.

"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?"

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 Writers Are Not Only Writers, They Are Also Citizens.

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.

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

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

No Man However Great Is Greater Than His People

Thought Provoking

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Living Fire Begets Cold, Impotent Ash.

Travellers With Closed Minds Can Tell Us Little Except About Themselves

Writers Don't Give Prescriptions. They Give Headaches!

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

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.

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.

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.

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'm Very Primitive; I Write With A Pen.

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

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

What A Man Does Not Know Is Greater Than He.

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

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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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Joseph Conrad Was A Thoroughgoing Racist. That This Simple Truth Is Glossed Over In Criticisms Of His Work Is Due To The Fact That White Racism Against Africa Is Such A Normal Way Of Thinking That Its Manifestations Go Completely Unremarked.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

This Is Not Pessimism But Rather Casting A Cold Eye On Things. It Is Only One Man's Story, And I Think That Things Will Go Better, But Difficulties Exist And Nothing Is Served By Hiding Them Under A Poetic Veil Or Under A Lyricism Of The Past. I Am Against Slogans.

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

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Thomas Jefferson

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