Books Quotes by Chinua Achebe

My weapon is literature

— Chinua Achebe

I teach literature. That's easy for me. Take someone else's work and talk about it.

— Chinua Achebe

If I write novels in a country in which most citizens are illiterate, who then is my community?

— Chinua Achebe

If someone said, I want to translate your novel into Igbo, I would say, Go ahead. But when I write in the…

— Chinua Achebe

I know that an important message is not a novel. To say that we should all be kind to our neighbors is…

— Chinua Achebe

The women are, of course, the biggest single group of oppressed people in the world and, if we are to believe the…

— Chinua Achebe

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

— Chinua Achebe

Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.

— Chinua Achebe

I do not actually see how art, literature can be anything other that being in that domain of trying to tell 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…

— 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…

— Chinua Achebe

The Novelist As Teacher”: “I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no…

— Chinua Achebe

In America there is really very little knowledge of the literature of the rest of the world. Of the literature of Latin…

— Chinua Achebe

I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more…

— Chinua Achebe

“Letters are, of course, quite special in my view, for when a reader has been sufficiently moved (or even perturbed) by a…

— Chinua Achebe

The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a…

— Chinua Achebe

We live in a sea of general ideas, so that's not a novel, since there are so many general ideas. But the…

— Chinua Achebe

The triumph of the written word is often attained when the writer achieves union and trust with the reader, who then becomes…

— Chinua Achebe

It's so easy to get into the same routine. A novel every two years; perhaps, improving technique. But I'm not interested in…

— Chinua Achebe

The market literature, which was particularly strong in Igboland, in Onitsha, today it is no longer strong. It is one of the…

— Chinua Achebe

“What was missing in all of them, he thought, was a recognition of Africans as people with projects—lives they were leading, aspirations…

— Chinua Achebe

My books have done extremely well, I know. But I don't honestly feel much different from when I began to write. I…

— Chinua Achebe

“Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they…

— Chinua Achebe

“When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands. In one of…

— Chinua Achebe

I do not think that there need be the conflict between books and videos, that one would drive out the other. It…

— Chinua Achebe

“With Chinelo, I learned that parents must not assume that all they had to do for books was to find the smartest…

— Chinua Achebe

If you ask me, Now, is it your best book? I would say, I don't really know. I wouldn't even want to…

— Chinua Achebe

Each of my books is different. Deliberately... I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fullness.

— Chinua Achebe

If you were to loose the habit of making the effort to get the book and read the words one by one…

— 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…

— Chinua Achebe

Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story…

— Chinua Achebe

When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands. In one of…

— Chinua Achebe

“Equiano, one of the luckiest among them, acquired an education, freed himself, and wrote a book in 1789: The Interesting Narrative of…

— Chinua Achebe

“I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my…

— Chinua Achebe

There's no lack of writers writing novels in America, about America. Therefore, it seems to me it would be wasteful for me…

— Chinua Achebe

The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a…

— Chinua Achebe

To the question of writing at all we have sometimes been counselled to forget it, or rather the writing of books. What…

— Chinua Achebe