{"author":"Chinua Achebe","author_id":"Chinua+Achebe","total_quotes":45,"quotes":[{"text":"When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk.","author":"Chinua Achebe","tags":["inspirational-life"],"id":1049,"author_id":"Chinua+Achebe"},{"text":"When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don't just turn it off one day.","author":"Chinua Achebe","tags":["day","tradition","you "],"id":8069,"author_id":"Chinua+Achebe"},{"text":"It always surprised him when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair.","author":"Chinua Achebe","tags":["inner-strength"],"id":14853,"author_id":"Chinua+Achebe"},{"text":"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 wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.","author":"Chinua Achebe","tags":["good","thought","story "],"id":33502,"author_id":"Chinua+Achebe"},{"text":"A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.","author":"Chinua Achebe","tags":["democracy","healthy","educated "],"id":42299,"author_id":"Chinua+Achebe"},{"text":"The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.","author":"Chinua Achebe","tags":["learn","nothing","only "],"id":69736,"author_id":"Chinua+Achebe"},{"text":"Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform.","author":"Chinua Achebe","tags":["inspirational-life"],"id":73339,"author_id":"Chinua+Achebe"},{"text":"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.","author":"Chinua Achebe","tags":["writers-on-writing"],"id":89792,"author_id":"Chinua+Achebe"},{"text":"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 it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so.","author":"Chinua Achebe","tags":["humanity"],"id":92332,"author_id":"Chinua+Achebe"},{"text":"I do not know how to thank you.''I can tell you,' said Obierika. 'Kill one of your sons for me.''That will not be enough,' said Okonkwo.'Then kill yourself,' said Obierika.","author":"Chinua Achebe","tags":["friendship","gratefulness","gratitude","thankfullness"],"id":98817,"author_id":"Chinua+Achebe"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":45,"pages":5,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}