Chinua Achebe Quotes

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Chinua Achebe

Profession : Writer

Birth : November 16, 1930

Nigera is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.

Chinua Achebe

When the British came to Ibo land, for instance, at the beginning of the 20th century, and defeated the men in pitched battles in different places, and set up their administrations, the men surrendered. And it was the women who led the first revolt.

Chinua Achebe

I don't care about age very much.

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

My position is that serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict. I don't see how art can be called art if its purpose is to frustrate humanity.

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.

Chinua Achebe

Many writers can't make a living. So to be able to teach how to write is valuable to them. But I don't really know about its value to the student. I don't mean it's useless. But I wouldn't have wanted anyone to teach me how to write.

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.

Chinua Achebe

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

Chinua Achebe

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.

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.

Chinua Achebe

The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery.

Chinua Achebe

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.

Chinua Achebe

What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens - whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.

Chinua Achebe

An artist, in my understanding of the word, should side with the people against the Emperor that oppresses his or her people.

Chinua Achebe

There's no lack of writers writing novels in America, about America. Therefore, it seems to me it would be wasteful for me to add to that huge number of people writing here when there are so few people writing about somewhere else.

Chinua Achebe

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

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.

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.

Chinua Achebe

I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.

Chinua Achebe