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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.

-Chinua Achebe

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We Live In A

Chinua Achebe

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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.

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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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

A Budding Writer Wants To Be Encouraged.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

If One Finger Brings Oil It Soils The Others.

My Weapon Is Literature

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.

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.

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

There Is Nothing To Fear From Someone Who Shouts.

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.

No Man However Great Is Greater Than His People

Thought Provoking

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

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

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.

While We Do Our Good Works Let Us Not Forget That The Real Solution Lies In A World In Which Charity Will Have Become Unnecessary.

I 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.

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

Living Fire Begets Cold, Impotent Ash.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Thought Provoking

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.

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

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

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.

She Pouted Her Lips Like A Gun In My Face.

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

Thought Provoking

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

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 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 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.

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

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

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

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

Thought Provoking

If You Were To Loose The Habit Of Making The Effort To Get The Book And Read The Words One By One You Would Have Lost Something Terribly Important. So I Think That We Have A Task To Ensure That This Doesn't Happen.

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

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.

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Almost Nobody Dances Sober, Unless They Happen To Be Insane. H. P. Lovecraft, Attributed, Telling It Like It Is Dancing Is Very Important Nowadays. No Girl Will Look At You If You Can't Dance.

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.

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.

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

Art Should Be On The Side Of Humanity.

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

Charity . . . Is The Opium Of The Privileged.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

A Chief Does Not Hurry.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 The Moon Is Shining The Cripple Becomes Hungry For A Walk

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Thought Provoking

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

If You're Rooted To A Spot, You Miss A Lot Of The Grace. So You Keep Moving, And This Is The Way I Think The World's Stories Should Be Told - From Many Different Perspectives.

We 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.

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

Thought Provoking

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 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.

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

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?

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.

Travellers With Closed Minds Can Tell Us Little Except About Themselves

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

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.

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

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.

When I Think Of The Standing, The Importance And The Erudition Of All These People Who See Nothing About Racism In Heart Of Darkness, I'm Convinced That We Must Really Be Living In Different Worlds.

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 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.

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 Toad Does Not Run In The Daytime For Nothing

The Story Of This Man Who Had Killed A Messenger And Hanged Himself Would Make Interesting Reading. One Could Almost Write A Whole Chapter On Him. Perhaps Not A Whole Chapter But A Resonable Paragraph, At Any Rate. There Was So Much Else To Include, And One Must Be Firm In Cutting Out Details. He Had Already Chosen The Title Of The Book, After Much Thought: `the Pacification Of The Primitive Tribes Of The Lower Niger.'

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Children Are Very Fair Minded, They Really Are.

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

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!

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Nigeria Independence

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Thought Provoking

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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

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.

"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."

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

When I Began Going To School And Learned To Read, I Encountered Stories Of Other People And Other Lands. In One Of My Essays, I Remember The Kind Of Things That Fascinated Me. Weird Things, Even, About A Wizard Who Lived In Africa And Went To China To Find A Lamp... Fascinating To Me Because They Were About Things Remote, And Almost Ethereal.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

A Debt May Get Mouldy, But It Never Decays.

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.

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

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.

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

Nigeria Independence

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.

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

The 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.

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

In The Vocabulary Of Certain Radical Theorists Contradictions Are Given The Status Of Some Deadly Disease To Which Their Opponents Alone Can Succumb. But Contradictions Are The Very Stuff Of Life. If There Had Been A Little Dash Of Contradiction Among The Gadarene Swine Some Of Them Might Have Been Saved From Drowning.

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.

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

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.

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. 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.

In Fact, I Thought That Christianity Was Very A Good And A Very Valuable Thing For Us. But After A While, I Began To Feel That The Story That I Was Told About This Religion Wasn't Perhaps Completely Whole, That Something Was Left Out.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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John Stuart Mill

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