A Quote by Chinua Achebe

It is difficult to express the reality of Ibo society in classical English. — © Chinua Achebe
It is difficult to express the reality of Ibo society in classical English.
It's difficult for a society to have a healthy discourse on its future when people are afraid to gather to express themselves and authorities won't allow it.
Not long time ago there was a striking example of the extent to which English has diverged: a television company put out a programme filmed in the English city of Newcastle, where the local variety of English is famously divergent and difficult, and the televised version was accompanied by English subtitles!
That mainstream English is essential to our self-preservation is indisputable . . . but it is not necessary to abandon Spoken Soul to master Standard English, any more than it is necessary to abandon English to learn French or to deprecate jazz to appreciate classical music.
We are at home here. Alienation is unnecessary. Contact with reality at a deep level is part of the Christian's life. He enters into reality, rather than escaping from it. The flight from reality is a mark of Eastern and classical mysticism, not of Christianity.
English is a forgiving language. It's not like Classical Arabic and it's not like French. You can speak broken English and be expressive and no one will hold it against you.
The argument that there was a social pathology of the English Reformation, that there were fundamental changes in English society and the English church which made the Reformation inevitable, is academically stone dead.
Having an interview in English is difficult for me, but acting in English is much harder. Because when I'm acting in English, if someone points out bad pronunciation or accent, I cannot focus on my emotions anymore, so it was very hard.
My images were surreal simply in the sense that my vision brought out the fantastic dimension of reality. My only aim was to express reality, for there is nothing more surreal than reality itself. If reality fails to fill us with wonder, it is because we have fallen into the habit of seeing it as ordinary.
The reality for me is simple. When music is written, it is usually categorized as classical. When it is improvised, it can still be called classical if it is an inspired improvisation. In either category, it is still music, and it can be good or bad or simply mediocre.
A Shakespeare could have arisen only on English soil. In the same way, your great dramatists and poets express the nature and essence of the Norwegian people, but they also express that which is universally valid for all mankind.
It has been said that I have three heroes: Christ, Marx and Freud. This is reducing everything to formulae. In truth, my only hero is Reality. If I have chosen to be a filmmaker as well as a writer it is because, rather than expressing reality through those symbols that are words, I have preferred the cinema as a means of expression - to express reality through reality.
MUSTANG, n. An indocile horse of the western plains. In English society, the American wife of an English nobleman.
All great art is by its very essence in conflict with the society with which it exists. It expresses the truth about the existence regardless of whether this truth serves or hinders the survival purpose of a given society. All great art is revolutionary because it touches upon the reality of man and questions the reality of the various transitory forms of human society.
The only reality is our society, and I mean this seriously, Western Society is a very sick society.
English civilization the humanizing, the bringing into one harmonious and truly humane life, of the whole body of English society that is what interests me.
Being someone who had had a very difficult childhood, a very difficult adolescence - it had to do with not quite poverty, but close. It had to do with being brought up in a family where no one spoke English, no one could read or write English. It had to do with death and disease and lots of other things. I was a little prone to depression.
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