The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.

I’m a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just knew that there was something inside me that wanted me to tell who I...

Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit — in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever.

Oh, the most important thing about myself is that my life has been full of changes. Therefore, when I observe the world, I don’t expect to see it just like I was seeing the fellow...

If we have any role at all, I think it’s the role of optimism, not blind or stupid optimism, but the kind which is meaningful, one that is rather close to that notion of the...

At the most one could say that his chi or … personal god was good. But the Ibo people have a proverb that when a man says yes his chi says yes also. Okonkwo said...

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...

What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens – whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.

Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don’t then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story.

A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village ground...

Democracy is not something you put away for ten years, and then in the 11th year you wake up and start practicing again. We have to begin to learn to rule ourselves again.

The impatient idealist says: ‘Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.’ But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with...

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,...

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.

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

There’s no lack of writers writing novels in America, about America. Therefore, it seems to me it would be wasteful for me to add to that huge number of people writing here when there are...

When mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth

I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.

…she was sensitive enough and intelligent enough to understand, and her literary education could not but have sharpened her perception of the evidence before her eyes: that in the absurd raffle-draw that apportioned the destinies...

Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it’s far removed from your situation. This is...

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

People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that’s the time to do something about it, not when it’s around your neck.

Americans, it seems to me, tend to protect their children from the harshness of life, in their interest.

Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.

But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the...

If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own.

When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don’t just turn it off one day.

My position is that serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict. I don’t see how art can be called art if its purpose is to frustrate humanity.

A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.

I don’t care about age very much.

The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best...

When the British came to Ibo land, for instance, at the beginning of the 20th century, and defeated the men in pitched battles in different places, and set up their administrations, the men surrendered. And...

The foreign correspondent is frequently the only means of getting an important story told, or of drawing the world’s attention to disasters in the making or being covered up. Such an important role is risky...

Art is man’s constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.

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.

In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion...

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

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

An artist, in my understanding of the word, should side with the people against the Emperor that oppresses his or her people.

Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.

One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.

The most important thing about myself is that my life has been full of changes. Therefore, when I observe the world, I don’t expect to see it just like I was seeing the fellow who...

I’ve had trouble now and again in Nigeria because I have spoken up about the mistreatment of factions in the country because of difference in religion. These are things we should put behind us.

Many writers can’t make a living. So to be able to teach how to write is valuable to them. But I don’t really know about its value to the student. I don’t mean it’s useless....

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

When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.

I feel that there has to be a purpose to what we do. If there was no hope at all, we should just sleep or drink and wait for death. But we don’t want to...

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.

I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right...

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