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.
If you're going to be a Christian, you're going to change. You're going to lose some old friends, not because you want to, but because you need to.
We have a tendency to assume or believe saying I love you means we are ready for love, or that hearing it from someone else means they are ready. We just assume that we are on the same page about what it means. We don't know what someone else is thinking, projecting, assuming, expecting when they say that.
Forgiveness in the heart comes about when the walls of separation in the mind fall.
Wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mate and their pack. Yet both have been hounded, harassed and falsely imputed to be devouring and devious, overly aggressive, of less value than those who are their detractors.
That was part of her, and you used to know it. It's like now you only care about the Alaska you made up.
Do not believe that living together before marriage guarantees the future. By burning certain stages, you risk burning love itself. Time needs to be respected gradually, just like the expressions of love.
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