Quotes from Chinua Achebe

In such a regime, I say you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chest - without asking to be paid.

Real tragedy is never resolved. It goes on hopelessly forever. Conventional tragedy is too easy. The hero dies and we feel a purging of the emotions. A real tragedy takes place in a corner, in an untidy spot, to quote W. H. Auden. The rest of the world is unaware of it.

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.

Proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten

He who brings kola brings life.

My father used to say that it is the fear of causing offense that makes men swallow poison.

People are wrong when they tell you that Conrad was on the side of Africans because his story showed great compassion towards them. Africans are not really served by his compassion, whatever it means; they ask for one thing alone – to be seen for what they are: human beings. Conrad pulls back from granting them this favour in Heart of Darkness.

A man who asks questions does not lose his way; that is what our fathers taught us.

There was another epidemic that was not talked about much, a silent scourge—the explosion of mental illness: major depression, psychosis, schizophrenia, manic-depression, personality disorders, grief response, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, etc.—on a scale none of us had ever witnessed.

Our elders say that the sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them.

The Igbo are a very democratic people. The Igbo people expressed a strong antimonarchy sentiment—Ezebuilo—which literally means, a king is an enemy. Their culture illustrates a clear-cut opposition to kings, because, I think, the Igbo people had seen what the uncontrolled power of kings could do.

Don't disparage the day that still has an hour of light in its hand.

Nations enshrine mediocrity as their modus operandi, and create the fertile ground for the rise of tyrants and other base elements of the society, by silently assenting to the dismantling of systems of excellence because they do not immediately benefit one specific ethnic, racial, political, or special-interest group. That, in my humble opinion, is precisely where Nigeria finds itself today!

As the saying goes, the unexamined life is not worth-living.

My people have a saying which my father often used. A man whose horse is missing will look everywhere even in the roof.

Eneke the bird was asked why he was always on the wing and he replied: 'Men have learnt to shoot without missing their mark and I have learnt to fly without perching on a twig.'

I do not know how to thank you.' 'I can tell you,' said Obierika. 'Kill one of your sons for me.' 'That will not be enough,' said Okonkwo. 'Then kill yourself,' said Obierika.

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

what kind of democracy can exist side by side with so much corruption and ignorance?

Those who mismanage our affairs would silence our criticism by pretending they have facts not avaliable to the rest of us. Our best weapon against them is not to marshal facts, of which they are truly managers, but passion. Passion is our hope and strenght.

But let the slave who sees another cast into a shallow grave know that he will be buried in the same way when his day comes.

Africa never spared those who did what they liked instead of what they had to do.

A person who has not secured a place on the floor should not begin to look for a mat.

As she stood gazing at the circular darkness which has swallowed them, tears gushed from her eyes, and she swore within her that if she heard Ezinma cry she would rush into the cave to defend her against all the gods in the world. She would die with her.