Chinua Achebe quotes - page 4

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. (Chinua Achebe)
The problem with leaderless uprisings taking over is that you don't always know what you get at the other end. If you are not careful you could replace a bad government with one much worse! View quote
Chinua Achebe
Oh, the most important thing about myself is that my life has been full of changes. Therefore, when I observe the world, I don't expect to see it just like I was seeing the fellow who lives in the next room. View quote
Chinua Achebe
An artist, in my understanding of the word, should side with the people against the Emperor that oppresses his or her people. View quote
Chinua Achebe
The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this great diversity - that it's this or maybe that - you have just one large statement; it is this. View quote
Chinua Achebe
Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story. View quote
Chinua Achebe
Democracy is not something you put away for ten years, and then in the 11th year you wake up and start practicing again. We have to begin to learn to rule ourselves again. View quote
Chinua Achebe
I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life. View quote
Chinua Achebe
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 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. View quote
Chinua Achebe
When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands. View quote
Chinua Achebe
My parents were early converts to Christianity in my part of Nigeria. They were not just converts; my father was an evangelist, a religious teacher. He and my mother traveled for thirty-five years to different parts of Igboland, spreading the gospel. (Chinua Achebe)
They have not always elected the best leaders, particularly after a long period in which they have not used this facility of free election. You tend to lose the habit. View quote
Chinua Achebe
Presidents do not go off on leave without telling the country. View quote
Chinua Achebe
Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively. View quote
Chinua Achebe
I was a supporter of the desire, in my section of Nigeria, to leave the federation because it was treated very badly with something that was called genocide in those days. View quote
Chinua Achebe
Stories serve the purpose of consolidating whatever gains people or their leaders have made or imagine they have made in their existing journey thorough the world. View quote
Chinua Achebe
But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded, but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry. View quote
Chinua Achebe
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." [said Obierika]"There is no story that is not true," said Uchendu. "The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others. We have albinos among us. Do you not think that they came to our clan by mistake, that they have strayed from their way to a land where everybody is like them? View quote
Chinua Achebe
To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them. View quote
Chinua Achebe
Let us give them a portion of the Evil Forest. They boast about victory over death. Let us give them a real battlefield in which to show their victory. View quote
Chinua Achebe
The people you see in Nigeria today have always lived as neighbors in the same space for as long as we can remember. So it's a matter of settling down, lowering the rhetoric, the level of hostility in the rhetoric is too high. (Chinua Achebe)
I don't care about age very much. View quote
Chinua Achebe
Nigera is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be. View quote
Chinua Achebe
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. View quote
Chinua Achebe
I've had trouble now and again in Nigeria because I have spoken up about the mistreatment of factions in the country because of difference in religion. These are things we should put behind us. View quote
Chinua Achebe