As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us. Chinua Achebe More Quotes by Chinua Achebe More Quotes From Chinua Achebe I think dialects should be left alone. People should write in whatever dialect they feel they want to write. In the fullness of time, these dialects will sort themselves out. Chinua Achebe writing people thinking There is something about important stories that is not just the message, but also the way that message is conveyed, the arrangement of the words, the felicity of the language. So it's really a balance between your commitment, whether it's political or economic or whatever, and your craft as an artist. Chinua Achebe political artist commitment If someone said, I want to translate your novel into Igbo, I would say, Go ahead. But when I write in the Igbo language, I write my own dialect. I write some poetry in that dialect. Chinua Achebe dialect want writing Generally, I don't attempt to produce a certain number of words a day. The discipline is to work whether you are producing a lot or not, because the day you produce a lot is not necessarily the day you do your best work. So it's trying to do it as regularly as you can without making it - without imposing too rigid a timetable on your self. That would be my ideal. Chinua Achebe discipline self numbers A budding writer wants to be encouraged. Chinua Achebe be-encouraged want Just think of the work you've set yourself to do, and do it as well as you can. Chinua Achebe wells thinking Once you have really done all you can, then you can show it to people. But I find this is increasingly not the case with the younger people. They do a first draft and want somebody to finish it off for them with good advice. Chinua Achebe done advice people Those who are talking sharia in Nigeria are really just politicians exploiting what they think is available. But if it should turn out that there are in fact whole sections of the country which believe that it is legitimate to chop off peoples hands because they stole a hen - if that should really turn out to be the genuine belief of responsible, educated people in the North than I would say there is no chance. But I do not believe that is the case. The sharia was always there but it was never force onto non-Muslims and it was not ever applied in the area of criminal law. Chinua Achebe believe country thinking I think Africa is slowly learning - and painfully - that importance of insisting on responsible leadership. It will come eventually, and we may be impatient and rightly so, because it is not coming fast enough. But that is the way to go. Chinua Achebe may way thinking I think the language that we use in dealing with one another is very important. And even if I am called upon to bring out some money to support a regime, and I am entitled to say I do not like what that regime does and obviously I am not going to put money there - you cannot really say this is wrong or this is unreasonable. Chinua Achebe support important thinking If I say look unless you change your leaders I will not give you any aid, you are likely to have people who say: "To the hell with you, we will struggle on the way but we will do it". Therefore what I am saying is - and I do not whether it is coming through clearly - there has to be a lot of care exercised by the people who are in the position to give or withhold assistance: if they start throwing their weight around, using extreme language, seeming to order other nations to do their bidding, then there will not be a good result, it will not be done. Chinua Achebe struggle giving order Stories serve the purpose of consolidating whatever gains people or their leaders have made or imagine they have made in their existing journey thorough the world. Chinua Achebe leader journey people Art is created to make us, to make our passage through the world better, fruitful - and I would say that every story in the end, if it is good, tells us something. This is actually what I meant when I said a novelist is a teacher. Which is why I am constantly dealing with "didactic". Now a teacher in the sense I use it is not somebody who has the profession of standing in front of children, with a piece of chalk in his hand scribbling on the blackboard. That is not the teacher I have in mind. The teacher I have in mind is something less tangible. Chinua Achebe teacher children art I do not actually see how art, literature can be anything other that being in that domain of trying to tell us, trying to get us to see what is important in our lives. Chinua Achebe important trying art Children are very fair minded, they really are. Chinua Achebe fairs children There are people who say that if you are told that your house has fallen you don't ask what about the ceiling or what about the windows. The main thing is that this house, Africa, has fallen. Literature is just one aspect, pick any aspect of the situation. Chinua Achebe ceilings house people This is why I find racism impossible, because this is against humanity. Chinua Achebe racism humanity impossible The people you see in Nigeria today have always lived as neighbors in the same space for as long as we can remember. So it's a matter of settling down, lowering the rhetoric, the level of hostility in the rhetoric is too high. Chinua Achebe space long people I do not think that there is any time in our history when things were perfect. I do not expect such times in the near future either. But I think every generation has to examine what needs to be done, what belongs to its peace and proceed. And so what needs to be done will change with time depending on the conditions, whatever the conditions happen to be. And they will not be the same for generation after generation. Chinua Achebe perfect needs thinking Good leaders, competent leaders must see it as primary task to create friendliness. This something within the scope of most people. Now artists, like writers and sort of course have an added option of using their scale and talent with this in view. It is their business to create an environment in which our people will prosper and be happy. Chinua Achebe artist views people
