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

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

— Chinua Achebe

You must develop the habit of skepticism, not swallow every piece of superstition you are told by witch-doctors and professors.

— Chinua Achebe

The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should…

— Chinua Achebe

Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time…

— Chinua Achebe

There is no story that is not true, [...] The world has no end, and what is good among one people is…

— Chinua Achebe

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

— Chinua Achebe

Good leaders, competent leaders must see it as primary task to create friendliness. This something within the scope of most people. Now…

— Chinua Achebe

I do not think that there is any time in our history when things were perfect. I do not expect such times…

— Chinua Achebe

Anybody who wants to rule a group will find that if this group is quarreling among themselves they leave you alone.

— Chinua Achebe

In dealing with a man who thinks you are a fool, it is good sometimes to remind him that you know what…

— Chinua Achebe

I feel that the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to…

— Chinua Achebe

The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian land or…

— Chinua Achebe

I think once you have done all you can to a manuscript, let it find its way in the world.

— Chinua Achebe

“Eneke the bird says that since men have learned to shoot without missing, he has learned to fly without perching.”

— Chinua Achebe

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

— 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

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

— Chinua Achebe

Every lizard lies on its belly, so we cannot tell which has a belly-ache

— 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

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

— Chinua Achebe

There is nothing to fear from someone who shouts.

— 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…

— Chinua Achebe

We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.

— 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