Nigerian writer (1930-2013)
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Things Fall Apart
As a rule I don't like suffering to no purpose. Suffering should be creative, should give birth to something good and lovely.
CHINUA ACHEBE
A Man of the People
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE
attributed, Chinua Achebe: A Celebration
Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments
If you only hear one side of the story, you have no understanding at all.
CHINUA ACHEBE
The Atlantic Online, Aug. 2, 2000
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE
No Longer at Ease
The original oppression of Woman was based on crude denigration. She caused Man to fall, so she became a scapegoat. No, not a scapegoat which might be blameless but a culprit richly deserving of whatever suffering Man chose thereafter to heap on her. That is Woman in the Book of Genesis. Out here, our ancestors, without the benefit of hearing about the Old Testament, made the very same story differing only in local color. At first the Sky was very close to the Earth. But every evening Woman cut off a piece of the Sky to put in her soup pot, or in another version, she repeatedly banged the top end of her pestle carelessly against the Sky whenever she pounded millet or, as in yet another rendering - so prodigious is Man's inventiveness, she wiped her kitchen hands in the Sky's face. Whatever the detail of Woman's provocation, the Sky moved away in anger, and God with it.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Anthills of the Savannah
An angry man is always a stupid man.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Anthills of the Savannah
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Anthills of the Savannah
You must develop the habit of skepticism, not swallow every piece of superstition you are told by witch-doctors and professors.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Anthills of the Savannah
A kinsman in trouble had to be saved, not blamed; anger against a brother was felt in the flesh, not in the bone.
CHINUA ACHEBE
No Longer at Ease
The sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Things Fall Apart
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Things Fall Apart
Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!
CHINUA ACHEBE
Anthills of the Savannah
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!
CHINUA ACHEBE
The Education of a British-Protected Child
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE
No Longer at Ease
A man's life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Things Fall Apart
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. This is what I try to tell my students: this is one great thing that literature can do -- it can make us identify with situations and people far away. If it does that, it's a miracle.
CHINUA ACHEBE
The Atlantic Online, Aug. 2, 2000