Nigerian writer (1930-2013)
I was brought up in a village where the old ways were still active and alive, so I could see the remains of our tradition actually operating. At the same time I brought a certain amount of detachment to it too, because my father was a Christian missionary, and we were not fully part of the "heathen" life of the village. It was divided into the people of the Church and the people of the "world." I think it was easier for me to observe. Many of my contemporaries who went to school with me and came from heathen families ask me today: "How did you manage to know all these things?" You see, for them these old ways were just part of life. I could look at them from a certain distance, and I was struck by them.
CHINUA ACHEBE
interview, Sunday Nation, Jan. 15, 1967
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Philadelphia Inquirer, Apr. 2, 2008
Death is tolerable only when it leads again to life.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Collected Poems
I flung open long-disused windows
and doors and saw my hut
new-swept by rainbow broom
of sunlight become my home again
on whose trysting floor waited
my proud vibrant life.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Attento, Soul Brother!
I have so many ideas; there are so many things that need to be done, so many possibilities, you know; one is terribly excited, but at the same time, you're almost confused, because you don't know where to begin.
CHINUA ACHEBE
interview, Okike, 1990
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
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!
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
Charity . . . is the opium of the privileged.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Anthills of the Savannah
What really worries me is that those who are in positions of power are not really affected by what we are writing. In the moral dialogue you want to start, you really want to involve the leaders. People ask me: "Why were you so bold as to publish A Man of the People? How did you think the Government was going to take it? You didn't know there was going to be a coup?" I said rather flippantly that nobody was going to read it anyway, so I wasn't likely to be fired from my official position. It's a distressing thought that we cannot engage our leaders in the kind of moral debate we need.
CHINUA ACHEBE
interview, Sunday Nation, Jan. 15, 1967
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!
This is not pessimism but rather casting a cold eye on things. It is only one man's story, and I think that things will go better, but difficulties exist and nothing is served by hiding them under a poetic veil or under a lyricism of the past. I am against slogans.
CHINUA ACHEBE
interview, Afrique, 1962
My theory of the uses of fiction is that benificent fiction calls into full life our total range of imaginative faculties and gives us a heightened sense of our personal, social and human reality.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
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
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
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
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!
Do you blame a vulture for perching over a carcass?
CHINUA ACHEBE
Arrow of God
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
A proud heart can survive general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Things Fall Apart