A Quote by Chinua Achebe
"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." [said Obierika]"There is no story that is not true," said Uchendu. "The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others. We have albinos among us. Do you not think that they came to our clan by mistake, that they have strayed from their way to a land where everybody is like them?"
Related Quotes
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.
There is no story that is not true, [...] The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.
Stories? We all spend our lives telling them, about this, about that, about people … But some? Some stories are so good we wish they’d never end. They’re so gripping that we’ll go without sleep just to see a little bit more. Some stories bring us laughter and sometimes they bring us tears … but isn’t that what a great story does? Makes you feel? Stories that are so powerful … they really are with us forever.
The desire for story is very, very deep in human beings. We are the only creature in the world that does this; we are the only creature that tells stories, and sometimes those are true stories and sometimes those are made up stories. Then there are the larger stories, the grand narratives that we live in, which are things like nation and family and clan and so on. Those stories are considered to be treated reverentially. They need to be part of the way in which we conduct the discourse of our lives and to prevent people from doing something very damaging to human nature.
I read individual stories a lot in magazines and other places, too, but I really think there's something to be said for reading story collections as collections. That's not true of all story collections, to be honest, but for good ones I think it often is true.
Remember on this one thing, said Badger. The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other's memories. This is how people care for themselves.
I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are as slaves.
In war," answered the weaver, "the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor. We must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die. We toil for them all day long, and they heap up gold in their coffers, and our children fade away before their time, and the faces of those we love become hard and evil. We tread out the grapes, another drinks the wine. We sow the corn, and our own board is empty. We have chains, though no eye beholds them; and are slaves, though men call us free.
I started writing the book without realizing I was writing a book. That sounds stupid, but it's true. I'd been trying and failing to make a different manuscript work, and I thought I was just taking a break by writing some short stories. I'm not a very good short story writer - the amazing compression that is required for short stories doesn't come easily to me. But anyway, I thought I'd try to write some short stories. And a structure took shape - I stumbled upon it.
I thought I could capture the stories of the city on paper. I thought I could write about the horrors of the city. Horror stories you see. I tell you I didn't have to look far for material. Everywhere I looked, there were stories hidden there in the dark corners. . . . I wrote and still there were more. . . . No one would publish them. 'Too horrible,' they said. 'Sick mind,' they said. I thought I could write about the horrors of the city but the horror is too big and it goes on forever.
When 93 percent of our stories are told by white men, it's an issue. And if those white men go on and tell the stories the way they see their world, which is all white, then it's an even bigger problem.
There was a point in my teenage years, when we were starting to play bigger shows and females were running after tour buses and all that, and my mom - and I remember this like it was yesterday - said: 'Look, I want you to know that I couldn't be prouder of you. You are extraordinary. You move people. But it doesn't make you better than them. You still put your pants on the same way as them, one leg at a time every morning.' I thought about learning to jump right into them, just to mess with her. But what she said stuck with me, and I think it's true.
Only common mortals like the Somervilles have good old rotten hates, dear,' said her mother. 'Sir Graham manages to love everybody and wouldn't know what you're talking about. Have a bun.' 'He doesn't love the Turks,' said Philippa. 'He kills them.' 'That isn't hate,' said Kate Somerville. 'That's simply hoeing among one's principles to keep them healthy and neat. I'm sure he would tell you he bears them no personal grudge; and they think they're going to Paradise anyway, so it does everyone good.
[About Jews] Among other nations, the vital problems are: a good crop, extension of the boundaries, strong armies, colonies; among us, if we wish to be true to ourselves, the vital questions are: conscience, freedom, culture, ethics.
People say that slaves were taken from Africa. This is not true: People were taken from Africa, among them healers and priests, and were made into slaves.
AS SOMBRAS DA ALMA. THE SHADOWS OF THE SOUL. The stories others tell about you and the stories you tell about yourself: which come closer to the truth? Is it so clear that they are your own? Is one an authority on oneself? But that isn't the question that concerns me. The real question is: In such stories, is there really a difference between true and false? In stories about the outside, surely. But when we set out to understand someone on the inside? Is that a trip that ever comes to an end? Is the soul a place of facts? Or are the alleged facts only the deceptive shadows of our stories?
Related Authors
Charles Bukowski Quotes
American
Novelist
Charles Dickens Quotes
English
Novelist
Chuck Palahniuk Quotes
American
Novelist
Ernest Hemingway Quotes
American
Novelist
George Eliot Quotes
British
Novelist
George Orwell Quotes
British
Novelist
George R. R. Martin Quotes
American
Novelist
Jane Austen Quotes
British
Novelist
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
German
Novelist
Margaret Atwood Quotes
Canadian
Novelist
Nicholas Sparks Quotes
American
Novelist
Paulo Coelho Quotes
Brazilian
Novelist
Sarah Dessen Quotes
American
Novelist
Stephenie Meyer Quotes
American
Novelist
Veronica Roth Quotes
American
Novelist
Victor Hugo Quotes
French
Novelist