The relationship with my people, the Nigerian people, is very good. My relationship with the rulers has always been problematic.
Interpretation
Cherishing connections with the populace while grappling with governance challenges.
Chinua Achebe highlights the distinction between his connection with the Nigerian people and the often fraught interactions with those in power. This suggests that personal relationships thrive on understanding and trust, while political relationships can be marred by conflict and dissonance.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about community engagement and political trust.
In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!
Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness. Narrow is the way and few the number. To fill the Lord's holy temple with an idolatrous crowd clamoring for signs was a folly of everlasting consequence. Our Lord used the whip only once in His life - to drive the crowd away from His church.
It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.
Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.
An angry man is always a stupid man.
Band-Aids don't fix bullet holes. You say sorry just for show. You live like that, you live with ghosts.
When you protect yourself from pain, be sure you do not protect yourself from love.
With emotional abuse, the insults, insinuations, criticism, and accusations slowly eat away at the victimβs self-esteem until he or she is incapable of judging a situation realistically. He or she may begin to believe that there is something wrong with them or even fear they are losing their mind. They have become so beaten down emotionally that they blame themselves for the abuse.
Israel has always been pro-American. Israel will always be pro-American.
Do you know what people want more than anything? They want to be missed. They want to be missed the day they don't show up. They want to be missed when they're gone.
This person had arrived, he had illuminated her, he had ensorcelled her with notions of miracle and beauty, he had both understood and misunderstood her, he had married her, he had broken her heart, he had looked upon her with those sad and hopeless eyes, he had accepted his banishment, and now he was gone. What a stark and stunning thing was life- that such a cataclysm can enter and depart so quickly, and leave such wreckage behind!
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