Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!
Interpretation
Writers often provoke thought and reflection rather than providing clear solutions.
This quote by Chinua Achebe highlights the idea that literature and writing do not serve to offer easy answers or straightforward guidance. Instead, writers stimulate critical thinking and may present complex ideas that can be challenging and even frustrating to digest, much like a headache. Achebe suggests that the true role of writers is to provoke thought and inspire their readers to engage deeply with the material, even if it leads to discomfort.
In practice
In a literary discussion, this quote can be used to emphasize the provocative nature of great literature.
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.
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.
Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.
There's so much more to tell about Africa than the usual stories about war, famine and disease.
I want my kids to graduate from high school. But that's not enough. I also want them to go to college. Why? Because rich people's kids go to college. And if that's good enough for them, it's good enough for my kids. Because you know what? College graduates don't tend to go to jail as frequently as nongraduates.
But in the new (math) approach, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer.
Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.
The art of good teaching begins when we can answer the questions our students are really trying to ask us, if only they knew how to do so.
There are two subjects, indeed, which I shall claim a right to further as long as I breathe: the public education, and the sub-division of counties into wards. I consider the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging on these two hooks.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.