The Best Chinua Achebe quotes

If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own. If you don’t like what somebody says, say what it is you don’t like. — Chinua Achebe

There is no story that is not true, […] The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others. — Chinua Achebe

If you only hear one side of the story, you have no understanding at all. — Chinua Achebe

It has always been quite apparent to me that no important story can fail to tell us something of value to us. — Chinua Achebe

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. — Chinua Achebe

Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don’t then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story. — 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

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

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

Unless I’m writing in the Igbo language, I use a language developed elsewhere, which is English. That affects the way I write. It even affects to some extent the stories I write. — 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

Only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior. The story outlives the sound of the war drum… The story is our escort. Without it we are blind… It is the thing that sets us apart from cattle. — Chinua Achebe

It is the story that owns and directs us. It is the thing that makes us different from cattle; it is the mark on the face that sets one people apart from their neighbors. — Chinua Achebe

We have heard stories about white men who make the powerful guns and the strong drinks and took slaves away across the seas, but no one thought the stories were true. — Chinua Achebe

If you’re rooted to a spot, you miss a lot of the grace. So you keep moving, and this is the way I think the world’s stories should be told–from many different perspectives. — Chinua Achebe

Children are very fair minded, they really are. — Chinua Achebe

A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk. — Chinua Achebe

Children are young, but they’re not naive. And they’re honest. They’re not going to keep wide awake if the story is boring. When they get excited you can see it in their eyes. — Chinua Achebe

No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man. — Chinua Achebe

If a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings. — Chinua Achebe

Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings. — Chinua Achebe

I’m sure if one turned one’s mind back from grandiose faults to what is happening to the average man or woman or child in the rural areas, we will probably find that’s where the energy for development is. — Chinua Achebe

Just think of the work you’ve set yourself to do, and do it as well as you can. — Chinua Achebe

I teach literature. That’s easy for me. Take someone else’s work and talk about it. — Chinua Achebe

While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary. — Chinua Achebe

Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively. — Chinua Achebe

I’m amazed when I think about students today. They know from day one what they are going to be. We didn’t. We just coasted. We just knew that things would work out. — Chinua Achebe

I have found that I work best when I am at home in Nigeria. But one learns to work in other places. — Chinua Achebe

Real tragedy is never resolved. It goes on hopelessly for ever. — Chinua Achebe

Poetry and slave trading cannot be bedfellows. That’s where I stand. — Chinua Achebe

A man who does not lick his lips, can he blame the harmattan for drying them? — Chinua Achebe

The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. — 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

A man who makes trouble for others is also making trouble for himself. — Chinua Achebe

A kinsman in trouble had to be saved, not blamed; anger against a brother was felt in the flesh, not in the bone. — Chinua Achebe

A man to whom you do a favor will not understand if you say nothing, make no noise, just walk away. You may cause more trouble by refusing a bribe than by accepting it. — Chinua Achebe

You do not know me,’ said Tortoise. ‘I am a changed man. I have learned that a man who makes trouble for others makes trouble for himself. — Chinua Achebe

You don’t ever want to say to a young person, You can’t, or, You are no good. Some people might be able to do it, but I don’t think I am a policeman for literature. So I tell them, Sweat it out, do your best. — Chinua Achebe

Whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight, then know that something is after its life. — Chinua Achebe

I do not actually see how art, literature can be anything other that being in that domain of trying to tell us, trying to get us to see what is important in our lives. — Chinua Achebe

What you must accept is that your life is not going to be the same while you are writing. — Chinua Achebe

A man’s life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors. — 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

I don’t care about age very much. I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life. — Chinua Achebe

Americans, it seems to me, tend to protect their children from the harshness of life, in their interest. — Chinua Achebe

In such a regime, I say, you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chest–without asking to be paid. — Chinua Achebe

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

After a war life catches desperately at passing hints of normalcy like vines entwining a hollow twig. — Chinua Achebe

Oh, 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

Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. — Chinua Achebe

There is that great proverb–that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. — Chinua Achebe

Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform. — Chinua Achebe

It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have–otherwise their surviving would have no meaning. — Chinua Achebe