In such a regime, I say you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chest - without asking to be paid.

— Chinua Achebe

In the end I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like. Just as in corrupt, totalitarian regimes, those who exercise power over others can do anything.

— Chinua Achebe

It always surprised him when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair.

— 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 difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.

— Chinua Achebe

Looking at a king's mouth,' said an old man, 'one would think he never sucked at his mother's breast.

— Chinua Achebe

Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft not the audience, that should be the greatest motivating factor. For me, at least, I can declare that when I wrote THINGS FALL APART I couldn't have told anyone the day before it was accepted for publication that anybody was going to read it. There was no guarantee; nobody ever said to me, Go and write this, we will publish it, and we will read it; it was just there. But my brother-in-law who was not a particularly voracious reader, told me that he read the novel through the night, and it gave him a terrible headache the next morning. And I took that as an encouraging endorsement! The triumph of the written word is often attained when the writer achieves union and trust with the reader, who then becomes ready to be drawn deep into unfamiliar territory, walking in borrowed literary shoes so to speak, toward a deeper understanding of self or society, or of foreign peoples, cultures and situations.

— Chinua Achebe

Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness. Narrow is the way and few the number. To fill the Lord's holy temple with an idolatrous crowd clamoring for signs was a folly of everlasting consequence. Our Lord used the whip only once in His life - to drive the crowd away from His church.

— Chinua Achebe

My parents were early converts to Christianity in my part of Nigeria. They were not just converts; my father was an evangelist, a religious teacher. He and my mother traveled for thirty-five years to different parts of Igbo land, spreading the gospel.

— Chinua Achebe

Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.

— Chinua Achebe

Nova went into an inner room and soon returned with a small wooden disc containing a kola nut, some alligator pepper and a lump of white chalk. "I have kola," he announced when he sat down, and passed the disc over to his guest. "Thank you. He who brings kola brings life. But I think you ought to break it," replied Okay passing back the disc. "No, it is for you, I think," and they argued like this for a few moments before Nova accepted the honor of breaking the kola. Okay, meanwhile, took the lump of chalk, drew some lines on the floor, and then painted his big toe.

— Chinua Achebe