Chinua Achebe Quotes

The best thing we can do is develop our own.

I've paved this road myself, and no one else has walked it the same exact way that I have. There are people that helped kick the door in, but it's really satisfying to be in a place where you know who you are and you've figured yourself out.

At midlife, you're pregnant with the best self you can be - someone who has learned enough from both successes and failures to add up to a fine human being.

It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.

You have to live through things. You can't have other people telling you to do that and do this. It's important to live through things.

I really want to keep at it until I find out what I'm capable of.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

Only by contending with challenges that seem to be beyond your strength to handle at the moment you can grow more surely toward the stars.

Grow up and let anyone try to contend with the adult you.

For me, a happy ending is not everything works out just right and there is a big bow, it's more coming to a place where a person has a clear vision of his or her own life in a way that enables them to kind of throw down their crutches and walk.

Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Find out what you're capable of.

Is life so wretched? Isn't it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddled? You are the one who must grow up.

It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.

I've got to where I've always wanted to be. I just feel more myself, and I've learned not to care what other people think. It's happened slowly, very slowly. But I did it.

It just gets easier in that you become more you in the process.

I had to find my own path, and in some ways, it's been a good thing.

Independence was something I really wanted from a young age and I think it really helped me make sense of myself, more so than perhaps say going to university would have done.

In life when you get tested, when you get rejected by everyone and when you get pushed aside, you actually get the best out of it. That has been a learning curve for me.

Me finding my confidence took me a while, but now I love that I went through everything I did before to get to where I am now.

Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself.

I am dedicated to the belief that it is God's will that all men should strive for wisdom in themselves, not look to it from some other. Babes, perhaps, must have their food chewed for them by a nurse, but men may drink and eat of wisdom for themselves.

I'm a grown woman. I've earned my experiences, my scars.

I set goals, take control, drink out my own bottle, I make mistakes but learn from every one, And when it's said and done, I bet this brother be a better one, If I upset you don't stress, Never forget, that God isn't finished with me yet

The world is very good at encouraging you to go along with the status quo and at basking in your successes. But when you hit a wall in your personal life, and you screw up, people don't give you a chance to navigate your way through it and tap into what's extraordinary about you.

There are great advantages to seeing yourself as an accident created by amateur parents as they practiced. You then have been left in an imperfect state and the rest is up to you. Only the most pitifully inept child requires perfection from parents.