"If you don't like someone's story, write your own."

"The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place."

"While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary."

"Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am - and what I need - is something I have to find out myself."

"There is no story that is not true, [...] The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others."

"To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them."

"Charity . . . is the opium of the privileged."

"My weapon is literature"

"When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool."

"One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised."

"If I hold her hand she says, ‘Don’t touch!’ If I hold her foot she says ‘Don’t touch!’ But when I hold her waist-beads she pretends not to know."

"There is no story that is not true."

"When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk"

"If you don't like my story,write your own"

"Nobody can teach me who I am."

"Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings."

"People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories."

"...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly."

"Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten."

"Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity."

"When Suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat left for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool."

"Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!"

"It always surprised him when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair."

"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."

"A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk."

"Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter."

"You do not know me,’ said Tortoise. ‘I am a changed man. I have learned that a man who makes trouble for others makes trouble for himself."

"The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others."

"A man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness"

"The impatient idealist says: 'Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.' But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace."

"...Nothing puzzles God"

"At the most one could say that his chi or ... personal god was good. But the Ibo people have a proverb that when a man says yes his chi says yes also. Okonkwo said yes very strongly; so his chi agreed."

"There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless."

"Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform."

"People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience."

"Women and music should not be dated."

"For whom is it well, for whom is it well? There is no one for whom it is well."

"Procrastination is a lazy man's apology."

"An old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb"

"A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing"

"That we are surrounded by deep mysteries is known to all but the incurably ignorant."

"There was a saying in Umuofia that as a man danced so the drums were beaten for him."

"When a coward sees a man he can beat he becomes hungry for a fight."

"When mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth"

"In my definition I am a protest writer, with restraint."

"It is the story that owns and directs us. It is the thing that makes us different from cattle; it is the mark on the face that sets one people apart from their neighbors."

"A child cannot pay for its mother's milk"

"He saw himself and his fathers crowding round their ancestral shrine waiting in vain for worship and sacrifice and finding nothing but ashes of bygone days.."

"As our fathers said, you can tell a ripe corn by its look."

"When a man is at peace with his gods and ancestors, his harvest will be good or bad according to the strength of his arm."