Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebewas a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic. His first novel Things Fall Apartwas considered his magnum opus, and is the most widely read book in modern African literature...
NationalityNigerian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 November 1930
CityOgidi, Nigeria
CountryNigeria
humanity
We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.
common-sense people demand
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.
writing people stories
People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.
reality giving mouths
Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.
people juicy toads
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.
running risk injustice
...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.
understanding sides stories
If you only hear one side of the story, you have no understanding at all.
art oil conversation
Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.
father corn looks
As our fathers said, you can tell a ripe corn by its look.
use world pay
The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use.
men stories doe
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.
doors color different
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.
stories facts christianity
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.
people awful boring
The most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable.