"I do not see that it is necessary for any people to prove to another that they build cathedrals or pyramids before they can be entitled to peace and safety."

"Paradoxically, a saint like [Albert] Schweitzer can give one a lot more trouble than King Leopold II, villain of unmitigated guilt, because along with doing good and saving African lives Schweitzer also managed to announce that the African was indeed his brother, but only his junior brother."

"The point in all this is that language is a handy whipping boy to summon and belabor when we have failed in some serious way. In other words, we play politics with language, and in so doing conceal the reality and the complexity of our situation from ourselves and from those foolish enough to put their trust in us."

"It is appropriate that we celebrate Martin Luther King, a man who struggled so valiantly to restore humanity to the oppressed and the oppressor."

"Some people flinch when you talk about art in the context of the needs of society thinking you are introducing something far too common for a discussion of art. Why should art have a purpose and a use? Art shouldn't be concerned with purpose and reason and need, they say. These are improper. But from the very beginning, it seems to me, stories have indeed been meant to be enjoyed, to appeal to that part of us which enjoys good form and good shape and good sound."

"There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless."

"People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience."

"Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform."

"Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world."

"There was another epidemic that was not talked about much, a silent scourge—the explosion of mental illness: major depression, psychosis, schizophrenia, manic-depression, personality disorders, grief response, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, etc.—on a scale none of us had ever witnessed."

"Camara Laye’s The Dark Child and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart because they gave me a glorious shock of recognition. Until I read them, I was not consciously aware that people who looked like me could exist in books. I grew up in a Nigerian university town, and all the books I read before then were foreign children’s books with white characters doing unfamiliar things."

"I do reread novels I love, like Chinua Achebe’s “Arrow of God,” to remind myself of what fiction can do."

"When I read Things Fall Apart which is about an Ibo tribe in Nigeria, a tribe I never saw, a system-to put it that way or a society, the rules of which were a mystery to me, I recognized everybody in it. And that book was about my father. How we got over I don't know, we did!""

"Achebe is a great writer. He is the father of our English literature. You can't take that away from him. His work is highly original. When I was doing my degree here, I used Arrow of God, which I think is his best work. But the critics seem to think everything should be like Things Fall Apart. Everytime you want to read Achebe, you feel you want to study it as literature. You don't pick it up as though you want to enjoy the literature. That is why for a very, very long time, if you went to the African Writers Series, you had the feeling that this is not for the common people."

"I rank Achebe very highly, especially his Arrow of God, and I consider it a tragedy that he has had to live under such disturbed conditions and writes so little."

"He has begun to resuscitate and reinstate the past, the precolonial era. I'm thinking of Arrow of God, which to my mind is perhaps the best novel to come out of Africa. I think it is an absolutely wonderful novel. And if you look at that novel, it really has almost nothing to do with the impact of the white man. It is about black life, black civilization, before the period of conquest. The period of conquest is just on the horizon, so to speak. But there are not many people who have tackled that kind of theme. There are not many black writers who have done it yet."

"Chinua Achebe was a real education for me, a real education."

"A Conrad student informed me in Scotland that Africa is merely a setting for the disintegration of the mind of Mr. Kurtz. Which is partly the point. Africa as setting and backdrop which eliminates the African as human factor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril."

"In his mind, he could see the ravages of war: destruction, suffering, hunger, and the grotesque faces of men turned beasts by the bitterness of combat."

"War is war. The strong will always crush the weak. The only difference is that in the process some have made a lot of money and others a lot of misery."

"When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool."

"People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories."

"I don't believe anybody will be so unlike other people that they will be unhappy when their sons are engaged to marry."

"We did not ask him for money yesterday; we shall not ask him tomorrow. But today is our day; we have climbed the iroko tree and would be foolish not to take down all the firewood we need."

"They led and he followed blindly, his heavy chest heaving up and down in silent weeping ... it was the worst kind of madness, deep and tongue-tied."

"Lame foot in the air."

"He warns them not to become “disinherited”."

"He calls the ground where men return in death a place of “safety” and “strength” ."

"Lying in wait for the people’s land and resources."

"A dead end nor total loss."

"Measure out / [their] joys and agonies / too, our long, long passion week / in paces of the dance”"

"By immediately identifying his people as “men of soul” ."

"Praise bounteous providence if you will that grants even an ogre a tiny glow-worm tenderness encapsulated in icy caverns of a cruel heart or else despair for in the very germ of that kindred love is lodged the perpetuity of evil."

"So Chike’s adventure on the River Niger brought him close to danger and then rewarded him with good fortune. It also exposed Mr. Peter Nwaba, the rich but miserly trader. For it was he who had led the other thieves."

"In his joy, he said again, ‘Thank you, sir.’ The man did not reply; he was talking to his friend again, with a cigarette in his mouth."

"Then the stranger went away and Mr. Nwaba retired to his room. Chike did not give much thought to the incident at the time. But he was to remember it later."

"The largest sum of money he had ever had at one time was threepence."

"After the incident of the leopard skin Chike lost some of his eagerness for crossing the Niger. He did not see how he could obtain one shilling without stealing or begging."

"At first Onitsha looked very strange to Chike. He could not say who was a thief or kidnapper and who was not. In Umuofia every thief was known, but here even people who lived under the same roof were strangers to one another."

"That’s all they cared for,’ [Max] said with a solemn face. ‘Women, cars, landed property. But what else can you expect when intelligent people leave politics to illiterates like Chief Nanga?"

"What mattered was that a man had treated me as no man had a right to treat another—not even if he was master and the other slave; and my manhood requires that I made him pay for his insult in full measure."

"In Chief Nanga’s company it was impossible not to be merry."

"A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday."

"We had all accepted things from white skins that none of us would have brooked from our own people."

"He looked as bright as a new shilling in his immaculate white robes."

"The man who brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit"

"a man should hold his compound together, not plant dissension among his children"

"The man was a complete nonentity until we crowned him, and now he carries on as though he had been nothing else all his life. It’s the same with Court Clerks and even messengers. They all manage to turn themselves into little tyrants over their own people. It seems to be a trait in the character of the negro"

"A man does not speak a lie to his son,” he said. “Remember that always. To say My father told me is to swear the greatest oath"

"I have traveled in Olu and I have traveled in Igbo, and I can tell you there is no escape from the white man. He has come. When Suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool. The white man is like that. Before any of you here was old enough to tie the cloth between the legs I saw with my own eyes what the white man did to Abame. Then I knew there was no escape. As daylight chases away darkness so will the white man drive away all our customs. I know that as I say it now it passes by your ears, but it will happen. The white man has power which comes from the true God and it burns like fire. This is the God about Whom we preach every eighth day."