Nigerian writer (1930-2013)
Charity . . . is the opium of the privileged.
CHINUA ACHEBE
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Anthills of the Savannah
Only half-wits can stumble into such enormities.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Anthills of the Savannah
Do you blame a vulture for perching over a carcass?
CHINUA ACHEBE
Arrow of God
Praise bounteous
providence if you will
that grants even an ogre
a tiny glow-worm
tenderness encapsulated
in icy caverns of cruel
heart or else despair
for in the very germ
of that kindred love is
lodged the perpetuity
of evil.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Attento, Soul Brother!
In his long evolutionary history, man has scored few greater successes than his creation of human society. For it is on that primeval achievement that he has built those special qualities of mind and of behaviour which, in his own view at least, separate him from lower forms of life. If we sometimes tend to overlook this fact it is only because we have lived so long under the protective ambience of society that we have come to take its benefits for granted.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
If one finger brings oil it soils the others.
CHINUA ACHEBE
No Longer at Ease
Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit -- in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Anthills of the Savannah
Whatever music you beat on your drum there is somebody who can dance to it.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Arrow of God
Strange
indeed how love in other
ways so particular
will pick a corner
in that charnel-house
tidy it and coil up there, perhaps
even fall asleep--her face
turned to the wall!
CHINUA ACHEBE
Attento, Soul Brother!
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!
She pouted her lips like a gun in my face.
CHINUA ACHEBE
"Misunderstanding", Collected Poems
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
We must now turn from considering the necessary struggle with language arising, as it were, from its very nature and the nature of the society it serves to the more ominous threat to its integrity brought about neither by its innate inadequacy nor yet by the incompetence and carelessness of its ordinary users, but rather engineered deliberately by those who will manipulate words for their own ends.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist. That this simple truth is glossed over in criticisms of his work is due to the fact that white racism against Africa is such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely unremarked.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
Fortunately, in real life, we are not in danger of these bizarre extremes unless we consciously work our way into them. I can see no situation in which I will be presented with a Draconic choice between reading books and watching movies; or between English and Igbo. For me, no either/or; I insist on both. Which, you might say, makes my life rather difficult and even a little untidy. But I prefer it that way.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.
CHINUA ACHEBE
No Longer at Ease
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
Dancing is very important nowadays. No girl will look at you if you can't dance.
CHINUA ACHEBE
No Longer at Ease
The eye is not harmed by sleep.
CHINUA ACHEBE
No Longer at Ease
It's so easy to get into the same routine. A novel every two years; perhaps, improving technique. But I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in doing something fundamentally important--and therefore, it needs time. And what I've been doing, really, is avoiding this pressure to get into the habit of one novel a year. This is what is expected of novelists. And I have never been really too much concerned with doing what is expected of novelists, or writers, or artists. I want to do what I believe is important.
CHINUA ACHEBE
interview, Okike, 1990