Chinua Achebe Quotes

I'm a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just knew that there was something inside me that wanted me to tell who I was, and that would have come out even if I didn't want it.

Chinua Achebe

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Quotes to Explore

• I was shy. I was painfully shy, until fifth grade when I transferred to another school and befriended the class clown. And one day he was sick and I kinda stepped in for the class clown and I said, 'Wow, this is exciting, I'm a little bit nervous.'

  

  Nathan Fillion
  • School
  • Day
  • Sick

• People don't appreciate that when you're on the Internet, it's a 24/7 job. Even if you're not releasing episodes, your show is living and breathing on the Internet because there's a community around it. Ninety percent of the work is after the web series is shot, and you have to constantly maintain your community, because it's all you have.

  

  Felicia Day
  • People
  • Work
  • Job

• Grand Slam losses are hard. I treat myself after losses though, I usually go to McDonald's and I have a hamburger and you know, something. Because you know, you just need to be nice to yourself sometimes after the loss.

  

  Venus Williams
  • Nice
  • Myself
  • Yourself

• There should be at least one leak like the Pentagon Papers every year.

  

  Daniel Ellsberg
  • Like
  • Year
  • Leak

• Our soldiers show every single day that they are more than good enough.

  

  Tammy Duckworth
  • Good
  • Single
  • Day

• I pride myself on definitely being more than a dunker.

  

  Zach LaVine
  • Myself
  • Pride
  • Being

• Not being able to read and write music is not the same as being illiterate in speech and writing.

  

  Yiannis Chryssomallis
  • Music
  • Writing
  • Speech

• My life is exactly the way it needs to be.

  

  Octavia Spencer
  • Life
  • Way
  • My Life

• I think I have great responsibility, and when I do my music, when I try to relate to my audience, I just try to do it in an honest fashion, you know, just try to be as earnest as possible and sometime it may be self-effacing. Sometimes it may be finger-pointing. Sometimes it may be beautiful, and sometime it may be ugly.

  

  Q-Tip
  • Great
  • Music
  • May

• My mother was in the kind of late-'60s, early-'70s origins of female emancipation. And she was very much like, 'You're not going to be defined by how you look. It's going to be about who you are and what you do.'

  

  Felicity Jones
  • She
  • Mother
  • Kind

• I've learned that every working mom is a superwoman.

  

  Uma Thurman
  • Mom
  • Working
  • Learned

• Politicians are wonderful people as long as they stay away from things they don't understand, such as working for a living.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • People
  • Long
  • Understand

• I fell in love with Virginia Woolf in college. I especially admire how well she writes about daily life, how she captures so much meaning and consequence in the smallest details of a day.

  

  Karen Thompson Walker
  • Life
  • Meaning
  • Consequence

• In the business world an executive knows something about everything, a technician knows everything about something and the switchboard operator knows everything.

  

  Harold Coffin
  • World
  • Business
  • Everything

• PS: It's all gossip about the prince. I'm not in the habit of taking my girlfriends' beaux.

  

  Wallis Simpson
  • Habit
  • Prince
  • Gossip

• In 1913, the noted German actor and director Paul Wegener was making a film in Prague when he heard the legend of Rabbi Loew, who created a golem to protect the inhabitants of the Prague ghetto from persecution.

  

  Kage Baker
  • Film
  • German
  • Legend

• It's strange to recall that America animated none of my youthful daydreams. I did not see a Hollywood film until my late teens.

  

  Pankaj Mishra
  • America
  • Hollywood
  • Late

• I'd started going to acting classes at 14, played 'Medea' at 15 and really wanted to be a classical actress.

  

  Barbra Streisand
  • Acting
  • Going
  • Actress

• I was a wild, mischievous kid, and I had tremendous imagination. Any experience I had, I'd try to reenact it.

  

  Adrien Brody
  • Experience
  • Kid
  • Reenact

• If you don't listen deeply, the connection won't take place.... [You have to be] willing to be changed by the person you're listening to, where you're not just waiting for a pause so you can say your thing, but you're actually letting them have an effect on you if they can.

  

  Alan Alda
  • Waiting
  • Listening
  • Place

• In our society, as people pass out of young adulthood, they tend to relate to themselves more in terms of what they are no longer than what they are now, and that's psychologically low-grade devastating.

  

  Marianne Williamson
  • People
  • Society
  • Relate

• I'm a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just knew that there was something inside me that wanted me to tell who I was, and that would have come out even if I didn't want it.

  

  Chinua Achebe