Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebewas a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic. His first novel Things Fall Apartwas considered his magnum opus, and is the most widely read book in modern African literature...
NationalityNigerian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 November 1930
CityOgidi, Nigeria
CountryNigeria
Chinua Achebe quotes about
purpose use language
It is as though the ancestors who made language and knew from what bestiality its use rescued them are saying to us: Beware of interfering with its purpose! For when language is seriously interfered with, when it is disjoined from truth, be it from mere incompetence or worse, from malice, horrors can descend again on mankind.
mean writing useless
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.
kind used ifs
What kind of power was it if it would never be used?
use world pay
The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use.
leaders nigerians
Nigerians are what they are because their leaders are not what they should be
character
There must be areas in which a particular character does not represent you.
writing accepting
What you must accept is that your life is not going to be the same while you are writing.
trying done kind
I prefer to go on trying all kinds of things, not to be told, This is the way it is done.
thinking
Just think of the work you've set yourself to do, and do it as well as you can.
book thinking ask-me
If you ask me, Now, is it your best book? I would say, I don't really know. I wouldn't even want to say. And I'd even go on and say, I don't even think so.
commitment artist political
There is something about important stories that is not just the message, but also the way that message is conveyed, the arrangement of the words, the felicity of the language. So it's really a balance between your commitment, whether it's political or economic or whatever, and your craft as an artist.
writing teach
I wouldn't have wanted anyone to teach me how to write. That's my own taste. I prefer to stumble on it.
trying
Whenever I try to do anything on a typewriter, it's like having this machine between me and the words; what comes out is not quite what would come out if I were scribbling.
trouble novel incomplete
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.