Quotes from Chinua Achebe

anybody who would dismiss them as mere tinkering would have to be a very committed adversary indeed! And he would have to demonstrate, not merely through intellectual abstractions but by pointing to an actual system in practice somewhere which can show better results and no scandals of one form or another.

Tu madre está aquí para protegerte.

Un hombre pertenece a la tierra de su padre cuando todo va bien y la vida es agradable. Pero cuando hay penas y amargura se refugia en la tierra de su madre. Tu madre está aquí para protegerte.

Obierika was a man who thought about things.

Okonkwo never showed any emotion openly, unless it be the emotion of anger. To show affection was a sign of weakness; the only thing worth demonstrating was strength.

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 deep 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.

I have learned that a man who makes trouble for others is also making it for himself.

Real tragedy is never resolved. It goes on hopelessly forever.

If we put ourselves between the god and his victim we may receive blows intended for the offender. When a man blasphemes, what do we do? Do we go and stop his mouth? No. We put our fingers into our ears to stop us hearing. That is a wise action.

The fly that has no one to advise him follows the corpse into the ground.

Tant que les lions n'auront pas leurs propres historiens, l'histoire de la chasse glorifiera toujours le chasseur

Okoye, meanwhile, took the lump of chalk, drew some lines on the floor, and then painted his big toe.

Any evil which you might have seen with your eyes, or spoken with your mouth, or heard with your ears or trodden with your feet; whatever your father might have brought upon you or your mother brought upon you, I cover them all here.

If it failed to give them a song, it at least gave them a tongue for sighing.

I can not live on the bank of a river and wash my hands with spittle.

the words of encouragement which the bedbug was said to have spoken to her children when hot water was poured on them all. She told them not to lose heart because whatever was hot must in the end turn cold.

It began to dawn on me that although fiction was undoubtedly fictitious it could also be true or false, not with the truth or falsehood of a news item but as to its disinterestedness, its intention, its integrity.

Equiano, one of the luckiest among them, acquired an education, freed himself, and wrote a book in 1789: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself. He preceded his European slave name by his original Igbo name and affirmed his African identity, waving it like a banner in the wind.

This does not in any way close the argument for the development of African languages by the intervention of writers and governments. But we do not have to falsify our history in the process. That would be playing politics. The words of the Czech novelist Kundera should ring in our ears: Those who seek power passionately do so not to change the present or the future but the past—to rewrite history. There is no cause for writers to join their ranks.

those whose palm-kernels were cracked for them by a benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble.

White racism in Africa, then, is a matter of politics as well as economics. The story of the black man told by the white man has generally been told to serve political and economic ends.

With Chinelo, I learned that parents must not assume that all they had to do for books was to find the smartest department store and pick up the most attractive-looking book in stock. Our complacency was well and truly rebuked by the poison we now saw wrapped and taken home to our little girl. I learned that if I wanted a safe book for my child I should at least read it through and at best write it myself.

It is praiseworthy to be brave and fearless, my son, 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. The man who has never submitted to anything will soon submit to the burial mat.

Today we have a system where only those individuals with the means of capital and who can both pay the exorbitant application fee and fund a political campaign can vie for the presidency. It would not surprise any close observer to discover that in this inane system, the same unsavory characters who have destroyed the country and looted the treasury and the nation blind are the ones able to run for the presidency!