CHINUA ACHEBE QUOTES IV

Nigerian writer (1930-2013)

The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Arrow of God

Tags: travel


Come here into the hollow of my conscience
I will show you a thing or two
I will show you the heat of my love.
You know what?
I can give you babies too
Real leaders of tomorrow
Right here under the bridge
I can give you real leaders of thought.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays


I broke at last
the terror-fringed fascination
that bound my ancient gaze
to those crowding faces
of plunder and seized my
remnant life in a miracle
of decision between white
collar hands and shook it
like a cheap watch in
my ear and threw it down
beside me on the earth floor
and rose to my feet.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Attento, Soul Brother!


The most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Anthills of the Savannah

Tags: power


The singer should sing well even if it is merely to himself, rather than dance badly for the whole world.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays

Tags: talent


You cannot plant greatness as you plant yams or maize. Who ever planted an iroko tree--the greatest tree in the forest? You may collect all the iroko seeds in the world, open the soil and put them there. It will be in vain. The great tree chooses where to grow and we find it there, so it is with the greatness in men.

CHINUA ACHEBE

No Longer at Ease


Dancing is very important nowadays. No girl will look at you if you can't dance.

CHINUA ACHEBE

No Longer at Ease

Tags: dancing


Do you blame a vulture for perching over a carcass?

CHINUA ACHEBE

Arrow of God

Tags: instinct


Man is sitting disconsolate on an anthill one morning. God asks him what the matter is and man replies that the soil is too swampy for the cultivation of the yams which God has directed him to grow. God tells him to bring in a blacksmith to dry the soil with his bellows. The contribution of humanity to this creation is so important. God could have made the world perfect if he had wanted. But he made it the way it is. So that there is a constant need for us to discuss and cooperate to make it more habitable, so the soil can yield, you see.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Conjunctions, Fall 1991

Tags: God, perfection


If one finger brings oil it soils the others.

CHINUA ACHEBE

No Longer at Ease


Now I think I know why gods
Are so partial to heights--to mountain
Tops and spires, to proud iroko trees
And thorn-guarded holy bombax,
Why petty household divinities
Will sooner perch on a rude board
Strung precariously from brittle rafters
Of a thatched roof
than sit squarely
On safe earth.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Collected Poems

Tags: God


There are two streams in the minds of our people: one in which women are really oppressed and given very low status and one in which they are given very high honour, sometimes even greater honour than men, at least if not in fact, in language and metaphor.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Conversations with Chinua Achebe

Tags: women


He who fights for a ne'er-do-well has nothing to show for it except a head covered in earth and grime.

CHINUA ACHEBE

No Longer at Ease


As a man danced so the drums were beaten for him.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Things Fall Apart

Tags: dance


Despite the daunting problems of identity that beset our contemporary society, we can see in the horizon the beginnings of a new relationship between artist and community which will not flourish like the mango-trick in the twinkling of an eye but will rather, in the hard and bitter manner of David Diop's young tree, grow patiently and obstinately to the ultimate victory of liberty and fruition.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays

Tags: artists


[Would] a sensible man spit out the juicy morsel that good fortune put in his mouth?

CHINUA ACHEBE

A Man of the People

Tags: fortune


Clearly there is no moral obligation to write in any particular way. But there is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless. An artist, in my definition of the word, would not be someone who takes sides with the emperor against his powerless subjects.

CHINUA ACHEBE

There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

Tags: writing, artists


The eye is not harmed by sleep.

CHINUA ACHEBE

No Longer at Ease


Whatever music you beat on your drum there is somebody who can dance to it.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Arrow of God

Tags: music, dance


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 deep 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.

CHINUA ACHEBE

There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

Tags: writing, literature