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Chinua Achebe
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„We have heard stories about white men who make the powerful guns and the strong drinks and took slaves away across the seas, but no one thought the stories were true.“
„In the many years in which he had toiled to bring civilization to different parts of Africa he had learned a number of things. One of them was that a District Commissioner must never attend to such undignified details as cutting a hanged man from the tree. Such attention would give the natives a poor opinion of him. In the book which he planned to write he would stress that point. […] One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate.“
„If the clan did not exact punishment for an offense against the great goddess, her wrath was loosed on all the land and not just on the offender. As the elders said, if one finger brought oil it soiled all the others.“
„Real tragedy is never resolved. It goes on hopelessly forever. Conventional tragedy is too easy. The hero dies and we feel a purging of the emotions. A real tragedy takes place in a corner, in an untidy spot, to quote W. H. Auden.“
„When there is a big tree small ones climb on its back to reach the sun.“
„”You sound as if you question the authority and the decision of the Oracle, who said he should die.””I do not. Why should I? But the Oracle did not ask me to carry out its decision.” […]”The Earth cannot punish me for obeying her mesenger,” Okonkwo said. “A child’s fingers are not scalded by a piece of hot yam which its mother puts into its palm.”“
„When did you become a shivering old woman,” Okonkwo asked himself, “you, who are known in all the nine villages for your valor in war? How can a man who has killed five men in battle fall to pieces because he has added a boy to their number? Okonkwo, you have become a woman indeed.“
„After such treatment it would think twice before coming again, unless it was one of the stubborn ones who returned, carrying the stamp of their mutilation–a missing finger or perhaps a dark line where the medicine man’s razor had cut them.“
„”Beware Okonkwo!” she warned. “Beware of exchanging words with Agbala. Does a man speak when a god speaks? Beware!”“
„The land of the living was not far removed from the domain of the ancestors. There was coming and going between them, especially at festivals and also when an old man died, because an old man was very close to the ancestors. A man’s life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.“
„”Let us give them a portion of the Evil Forest. They boast about victory over death. Let us give them a real battlefield in which to show their victory.” […] They offered them as much of the Evil Forest as they cared to take. And to their great amazement the missionaries thanked them and burst into song.“
„We shall all live. We pray for life, children, a good harvest and happiness. You will have what is good for you and I will have what is good for me. Let the kite perch and let the egret perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break.“
„A man who lived on the banks of the Niger should not wash his hands with spittle.“
„Proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.“
„Eneke the bird was asked why he was always on the wing and he replied: “Men have learned to shoot without missing their mark and I have learned to fly without perching on a twig.”“
„The white man is very clever. He came quietly with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.“
„It was like beginning life anew without the vigor and enthusiasm of youth, like learning to become left-handed in old age.“
„For an African writing in English is not without its serious setbacks. He often finds himself describing situations or modes of thought which have no direct equivalent in the English way of life. Caught in that situation he can do one of two things. He can try and contain what he wants to say within the limits of conventional English or he can try to push back those limits to accommodate his ideas … I submit that those who can do the work of extending the frontiers of English so as to accommodate African thought-patterns must do it through their mastery of English and not out of innocence.“
„A man to whom you do a favor will not understand if you say nothing, make no noise, just walk away. You may cause more trouble by refusing a bribe than by accepting it.“
„If one finger brings oil it soils the others.“
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