Chinua Achebe. Quotes

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.

Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.

A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk.

Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too – If one says no to the other, let his wing break.

Women and music should not be dated.

It is the story that owns and directs us. It is the thing that makes us different from cattle; it is the mark on the face that sets one people apart from their neighbors.

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.

If a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings.

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

When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.

A pen on paper is the ideal way for me. I am not really very comfortable with machines; I never learned to type very well.

Contradictions if well understood and managed can spark off the fires of invention. Orthodoxy whether of the right or of the left is the graveyard of creativity.

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.

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

There are things the story must have or else look incomplete. And these will almost automatically present themselves. When they don't, you are in trouble and then the novel stops.

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

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

Each of my books is different. Deliberately... I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fullness.

A man who does not lick his lips, can he blame the harmattan for drying them?

When there is a big tree small ones climb on its back to reach the sun.

When a man is at peace with his gods and ancestors, his harvest will be good or bad according to the strength of his arm.

The rural areas have been deprived by the cities in the past. Development resources and energy should be directed where the people live.

Anybody who wants to rule a group will find that if this group is quarreling among themselves they leave you alone.

Men have learned to shoot without missing their mark and I have learned to fly without perching on a twig.

It is difficult to express the reality of Ibo society in classical English.

People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience.

Whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight, then know that something is after its life.

I prefer to go on trying all kinds of things, not to be told, This is the way it is done.

The language of young men is pull down and destroy; but an old man speaks of conciliation.

The man that brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit.

Americans, it seems to me, tend to protect their children from the harshness of life, in their interest. That's not the way my people rear their children. They let them experience the world as it is.

A man to whom you do a favor will not understand if you say nothing, make no noise, just walk away. You may cause more trouble by refusing a bribe than by accepting it.

Unless I'm writing in the Igbo language, I use a language developed elsewhere, which is English. That affects the way I write. It even affects to some extent the stories I write.

A boy sent by his father to steal does not go stealthily but breaks the door with his feet.

I think once you have done all you can to a manuscript, let it find its way in the world.

There must be areas in which a particular character does not represent you.

I wouldn't have wanted anyone to teach me how to write. That's my own taste. I prefer to stumble on it.

If someone said, I want to translate your novel into Igbo, I would say, Go ahead. But when I write in the Igbo language, I write my own dialect. I write some poetry in that dialect.

Serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict.

Travellers with closed minds can tell us little except about themselves

The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.

What is modesty but inverted pride?

When mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth

It always surprised him when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair.

I don't care about age very much.

There is nothing to fear from someone who shouts.

He is a fool who treats his brother worse than a stranger.

If one finger brings oil it soils the others.

Wisdom is like a goatskin bag; every man carries his own.

A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.