Chinua Achebe

Living fire begets cold, impotent ash.

— Chinua Achebe

I'm very primitive; I write with a pen.

— Chinua Achebe

There is no story that is not true.

— Chinua Achebe

A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk.

— Chinua Achebe

What is modesty but inverted pride?

— Chinua Achebe

An angry man is always a stupid man.

— Chinua Achebe

A chief does not hurry.

— Chinua Achebe

She pouted her lips like a gun in my face.

— Chinua Achebe

“villages that their leaders came together to save themselves.”

— Chinua Achebe

Presidents do not go off on leave without telling the country.

— Chinua Achebe

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

— Chinua Achebe

When a coward sees a man he can beat he becomes hungry for a fight.

— Chinua Achebe

There must be areas in which a particular character does not represent you.

— Chinua Achebe

When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk

— Chinua Achebe

No man however great is greater than his people

— Chinua Achebe

When a new saying gets to the land of empty men, they lose their heads over it.

— Chinua Achebe

“When you have paid a hundred and thirty pounds bride-price and you are only a second-class clerk, you find you haven’t got…

— Chinua Achebe

As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all…

— Chinua Achebe

The most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable.

— Chinua Achebe

“She believed because it was that faith alone that gave her own life any kind of meaning.”

— Chinua Achebe

Stories serve the purpose of consolidating whatever gains people or their leaders have made or imagine they have made in their existing…

— Chinua Achebe

“Decolonising the Mind, by an important African writer and revolutionary, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.”

— Chinua Achebe

Whenever I try to do anything on a typewriter, it's like having this machine between me and the words; what comes out…

— Chinua Achebe

People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that's the time to do something about it, not when…

— Chinua Achebe

I'm a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just knew…

— Chinua Achebe

I don't want to be the one to tell somebody, You will not make it, even though I know that the majority…

— Chinua Achebe

We shall all live. We pray for life, children, a good harvest and happiness. You will have what is good for you…

— Chinua Achebe

What I can say is that it was clear to many of us that an indigenous African literary renaissance was overdue. A…

— Chinua Achebe

Many writers can't make a living. So to be able to teach how to write is valuable to them. But I don't…

— Chinua Achebe

Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane. H. P. LOVECRAFT, attributed, Telling It Like It Is Dancing is very…

— 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

There is something about important stories that is not just the message, but also the way that message is conveyed, the arrangement…

— Chinua Achebe

What has happened to Africa is very severe. We are talking about the collapse of this and the collapse of that, of…

— Chinua Achebe

Man is sitting disconsolate on an anthill one morning. God asks him what the matter is and man replies that the soil…

— Chinua Achebe

“And now the rains had really come, so heavy and persistent that even the village rain-maker no longer claimed to be able…

— Chinua Achebe

Generally, I don't attempt to produce a certain number of words a day. The discipline is to work whether you are producing…

— Chinua Achebe

Those who are talking sharia in Nigeria are really just politicians exploiting what they think is available. But if it should turn…

— Chinua Achebe

I think that is one of the first things that I got clear in my mind when I began to play around…

— Chinua Achebe

If the economy of a country collapses completely and the hospitals are no longer able to function as hospitals, it will be…

— 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