Chinua Achebe Quotes About Energy
-
Writing is like wrestling; you are wrestling with ideas and with the story. There is a lot of energy required. At the same time, it is exciting. So it is both difficult and easy. What you must accept is that your life is not going to be the same while you are writing. I have said in the kind of exaggerated manner of writers and prophets that writing, for me, is like receiving a term of imprisonment-you know that's what you're in for, for whatever time it takes.
→ -
We live in a society that is in transition from oral to written. There are oral stories that are still there, not exactly in their full magnificence, but still strong in their differentness from written stories. Each mode has its ways and methods and rules. They can reinforce each other; this is the advantage my generation has - we can bring to the written story something of that energy of the story told by word of mouth.
→ -
The rural areas have been deprived by the cities in the past. Development resources and energy should be directed where the people live.
→ -
I'm sure if one turned one's mind back from grandiose faults to what is happening to the average man or woman or child in the rural areas, we will probably find that's where the energy for development is.
→ -
In Nigeria, there is energy, whether it is Lagos, which is sheer anarchy, but it is not lethargic. It is strong, even aggressive and if that energy could be directed to work it will produce really enormous results.
→ -
The writer is often faced with two choices--turn away from the reality of life's intimidating complexity or conquer its mystery by battling with it. The writer who chooses the former soon runs out of energy and produces elegantly tired fiction.
→ -
The reality of today, different as it is from the reality of my society one hundred years ago, is and can be important if we have the energy and the inclination to challenge it, to go out and engage with its peculiarities, with the things that we do not understand. The real danger is the tendency to retreat into the obvious, the tendency to be frightened by the richness of the world and to clutch what we always have understood.
→
Related Authors
-
Doris Lessing Novelist -
David Shields Author -
Salman Rushdie Novelist -
Olusegun Obasanjo Former President of Nigeria -
Gabriel Garcia Marquez Novelist -
Okey Ndibe Novelist -
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Writer -
-
Joseph Conrad Author -
Walter Abish Author -
Ngugi wa Thiong'o Writer -
Ama Ata Aidoo Author -
Obafemi Awolowo Nigerian statesman -
John Ashbery Poet -
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala Economist -
Ben Okri Poet -
Buchi Emecheta Novelist -
Nadine Gordimer Writer -
Wole Soyinka Writer -
Nnamdi Azikiwe Political figure