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.
It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's 'mature' critics often are.
I could undertake to be an efficient pupil if it were possible to find an efficient teacher.
Our children should learn the general framework of their government and then they should know where they come in contact with the government, where it touches their daily lives and where their influence is exerted on the government. It must not be a distant thing, someone else's business, but they must see how every cog in the wheel of a democracy is important and bears its share of responsibility for the smooth running of the entire machine.
I would no more teach children military training than teach them arson, robbery, or assassination.
At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.
Every woman needs to know when she's being discriminated against and what the reasons are why she isn't getting equal pay so we can close that pay gap.
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