Quote collection
300 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
"The singer should sing well even if it is merely to himself, rather than dance badly for the whole world."
"What a man does not know is greater than he."
"The ordinary Nigerians have lived as neighbors down the millennia. I was talking about the British who came and merged a whole number of mini states and big states into one unit. But those people were always there, and they always managed to live side by side with their neighbours. So they were not owned or run by one kingdom. It was not practically impossible for these people when they have different languages and religions to be neighbors. So it is that habit of neighbourliness which is destroyed and put under great strain again and again when you have things like massacres."
"I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders."
"Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!"
"Democracy is not something you put away for ten years, and then in the 11th year you wake up and start practicing again. We have to begin to learn to rule ourselves again."
"As our fathers said, you can tell a ripe corn by its look."
""You sound as if you question the authority and the decision of the Oracle, who said he should die." "I do not. Why should I? But the Oracle did not ask me to carry out its decision." [...] "The Earth cannot punish me for obeying her mesenger," Okonkwo said. "A child's fingers are not scalded by a piece of hot yam which its mother puts into its palm.""
"We do not seek to hurt any man, but if any man seeks to hurt us may he break his neck."
"A disease that has never been seen before cannot be cured with every-day herbs."
"My weapon is literature"
"I don't want to be the one to tell somebody, You will not make it, even though I know that the majority of those who come to me with their manuscripts are not really good enough."
"I think an artist, in my definition of that word, would not be someone who takes sides with the emperor against his powerless subjects. That's different from prescribing a way in which a writer should write."
"There was a saying in Umuofia that as a man danced so the drums were beaten for him."
"A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing"
"I grew up recognizing that there was nobody to give me any advice and that you do your best and if it's not good enough, someday you will come to terms with that."
"The women are, of course, the biggest single group of oppressed people in the world and, if we are to believe the Book of Genesis, the very oldest."
"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."
"Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft, not the audience, that should be the greatest motivating factor."