Okonkwo

Chinua Achebe Novelist, Poet

"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 Novelist, Poet

"An old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb"

Chinua Achebe Novelist, Poet

"Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate that the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself."

Chinua Achebe Novelist, Poet

"Beware Okonkwo!" she warned. "Beware of exchanging words with Agbala. Does a man speak when a god speaks? Beware!"