Quotes from Chinua Achebe

Only the hand fails to throw as straight as the eye sees.

The real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.

A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday.

You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the babies.

When a coward sees a man he can beat he becomes hungry for a fight.

Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.

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.

No man however great is greater than his people

Procrastination is a lazy man's apology.

A man who makes trouble for others is also making trouble for himself.

When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.

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.

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.

What a man does not know is greater than he.

We do not seek to hurt any man, but if any man seeks to hurt us may he break his neck.

There was a saying in Umuofia that as a man danced so the drums were beaten for him.

A man's life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.

Beware Okonkwo!" she warned. "Beware of exchanging words with Agbala. Does a man speak when a god speaks? Beware!

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.

A man who lived on the banks of the Niger should not wash his hands with spittle.

Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.

I teach literature. That's easy for me. Take someone else's work and talk about it.

I have found that I work best when I am at home in Nigeria. But one learns to work in other places.

People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.