Chinua Achebe Quotes

So often, literature about African people is conflated with literature about African politics, as if the state were somehow of greater import or interest than the individual.

Art has to be reflective of our society.

What Shakespeare was able to do in English he would certainly not have done in French.

Writing about our gods in English is unnatural, but I believe language is just a carrier - a means to an end.

A country, a style or an epoch are interesting only for the idea behind them.

Previously the same Polish audiences would have been pressured into seeing cinema made for adults, films made by us about those spheres of life that were significant for us and which should be significant for our society.

My experience of Chinese culture is indirect, through echoes. When I approach the cashier at my local Chinese supermarket, they switch to English before I've even said a word. They somehow know that I'm not quite Chinese enough.

Even though many Indians can read or speak English, for most, it is not their first language. At the office, we speak in English, but we consume our culture in our own language.

I feel I can express the nuances of the Bengali lifestyle and ways of thinking better than other cultures.

I think I'm an American writer writing about Latin America, and I'm a Latin American writer who happens to write in English.

Movies can tell us about our place, or lack of place, in our culture.

I have 5 children of my own. They are bilingual, like most second and third generations. But they speak primarily in English and they couldn't find anything on television that represented who they are in this country.

I never thought fashion was the job for me, because I'm Japanese. Clothes! That was a European, society thing.

Part of what our problem as blacks in America is that we don't claim that. Partly, you see, because of the linguistic environment in which we live.

Popular culture is most powerful when it offers us a vision of how our society should look - or at least reproduces our reality.

There is a future for English films. Don't we all talk, breathe, and think in English? If we can talk and think in English, we can also make films in English.

Maybe in Latvian one day I'll rap a little bit, but definitely not in English.

I sing in Arabic as a statement. It's art, and it's a challenge.

Our democracy should reflect our culture and our habits and our customs and our reality at the same time.

Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.

Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.

Oh, God, I don't know what's more difficult, life or the English language.

I sang a song in Hindi; nobody even knew what that was. Singing about Native American issues, nobody did that... I had no reason to want to copy anybody else... All I had was my originality.

Any group of persons – prisoners, primitives, pilots, or patients – develop a life of their own that becomes meaningful, reasonable and normal once you get close to it.

I read something in the paper that really confused me the other day. It said that 80 percent of the people in New York are minorities. Shouldn't you not call them minorities when they get to be 80 percent of the population? That's a very white attitude, don't you think? I mean, you could take a white guy to Africa and he'd be like 'Look at all the minorities around here! I'm the only majority.'