A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday.

My parents were early converts to Christianity in my part of Nigeria. They were not just converts; my father was an evangelist, a religious teacher. He and my mother traveled for thirty-five years to different parts of Igboland, spreading the gospel.

Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.

When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.

The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this great diversity - that it's this or maybe that - you have just one large statement; it is this.

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

When a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.