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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.

-Chinua Achebe

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Whenever I Try To

Chinua Achebe

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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.

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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.

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

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.

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.

Children Are Very Fair Minded, They Really Are.

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

She Pouted Her Lips Like A Gun In My Face.

A Debt May Get Mouldy, But It Never Decays.

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

Thought Provoking

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Do You Blame A Vulture For Perching Over A Carcass?

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.

"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?"

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?

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

What I Can Say Is That It Was Clear To Many Of Us That An Indigenous African Literary Renaissance Was Overdue. A Major Objective Was To Challenge Stereotypes, Myths, And The Image Of Ourselves And Our Continent, And To Recast Them Through Stories- Prose, Poetry, Essays, And Books For Our Children. That Was My Overall Goal.

The Triumph Of The Written Word Is Often Attained When The Writer Achieves Union And Trust With The Reader, Who Then Becomes Ready To Be Drawn Into Unfamiliar Territory, Walking In Borrowed Literary Shoes So To Speak, Toward A Deeper Understanding Of Self Or Society, Or Of Foreign Peoples, Cultures, And Situations.

The 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.

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

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.

Women And Music Should Not Be Dated.

A Chief Does Not Hurry.

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.

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

An Angry Man Is Always A Stupid Man.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Once You Allow Yourself To Identify With The People In A Story, Then You Might Begin To See Yourself In That Story Even If On The Surface It's Far Removed From Your Situation.

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.

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

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.

Nobody Can Teach Me Who I Am.

We Live In A Sea Of General Ideas, So That's Not A Novel, Since There Are So Many General Ideas. But The Moment A Particular Idea Is Linked To A Character, It's Like An Engine Moves It. Then You Have A Novel Underway.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 One Finger Brings Oil It Soils The Others.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

There Is Nothing To Fear From Someone Who Shouts.

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.

Among The Igbo The Art Of Conversation Is Regarded Very Highly, And Proverbs Are The Palm-oil With Which Words Are Eaten.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Thought Provoking

I Think As You Grow Up And You See Things Which Are Around You And You Ask Questions And You Hear The Answers, Your Situation Becomes More And More Of A Puzzle. Now, Why Is It Like This, Why Are Things Like This And Since Writing Is One Way In Which One Can Ask This Questions And Try To Find These Answers, It Seems To Me A Very Natural Thing To Do, Especially As It Meant Stories Which I Always Found Moving, Almost Unbearably Necessary.

We 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.

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.

No Man However Great Is Greater Than His People

Thought Provoking

What Is Modesty But Inverted Pride?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Unoka Went Into An Inner Room And Soon Returned With A Small Wooden Disc Containing A Kola Nut, Some Alligator Pepper And A Lump Of White Chalk. "i Have Kola," He Announced When He Sat Down, And Passed The Disc Over To His Guest. "thank You. He Who Brings Kola Brings Life. But I Think You Ought To Break It," Replied Okoye Passing Back The Disc. "no, It Is For You, I Think," And They Argued Like This For A Few Moments Before Unoka Accepted The Honor Of Breaking The Kola. Okoye, Meanwhile, Took The Lump Of Chalk, Drew Some Lines On The Floor, And Then Painted His Big Toe.

A Child Cannot Pay For Its Mother’s Milk.

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 Do Not Think That There Is Any Time In Our History When Things Were Perfect. I Do Not Expect Such Times In The Near Future Either. But I Think Every Generation Has To Examine What Needs To Be Done, What Belongs To Its Peace And Proceed. And So What Needs To Be Done Will Change With Time Depending On The Conditions, Whatever The Conditions Happen To Be. And They Will Not Be The Same For Generation After Generation.

In 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

There Are Things The Story Must Have Or Else Look Incomplete. And These Will Almost Automatically Present Themselves. When They Don't, You Are In Trouble And Then The Novel Stops.

The Problem With Leaderless Uprisings Taking Over Is That You Don't Always Know What You Get At The Other End. If You Are Not Careful You Could Replace A Bad Government With One Much Worse!

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.

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.

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

Art Should Be On The Side Of Humanity.

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

Thought Provoking

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

Failure Of Leadership

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Man Is Sitting Disconsolate On An Anthill One Morning. God Asks Him What The Matter Is And Man Replies That The Soil Is Too Swampy For The Cultivation Of The Yams Which God Has Directed Him To Grow. God Tells Him To Bring In A Blacksmith To Dry The Soil With His Bellows. The Contribution Of Humanity To This Creation Is So Important. God Could Have Made The World Perfect If He Had Wanted. But He Made It The Way It Is. So That There Is A Constant Need For Us To Discuss And Cooperate To Make It More Habitable, So The Soil Can Yield, You See.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Travellers With Closed Minds Can Tell Us Little Except About Themselves

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

My Weapon Is Literature

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

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

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.

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

Nigeria Independence

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.

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

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.'

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

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

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 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

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.

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

Things Fall Apart Important

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

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Amitabh Bachchan

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