FastSaying

When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.


Chinua Achebe

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

A Ritual to Read to Each Other


If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and...
WILLIAM STAFFORD I began telling stories as a volunteer in my daughters' school. But I grew up hearing stories fr...
CARMEN AGRA DEEDY If there is technological advance without social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increas...
, THE OTHER AMERICA, 1962 I learned to read at two. I was in a Montessori school and they teach you to read really, really you...
DAKOTA FANNING In graduate school, I learned this simple distinction: when people are driving themselves crazy, the...
ALBERT J. BERNSTEIN When I began writing, I didn't read any other children's poets... I didn't want to be in...
JACK PRELUTSKY I'm a huge fan of Tolkien. I read those books when I was in junior high school and high school, ...
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN To be able to make up stories has been a great gift to me from my ancestors and from the storyteller...
LESLIE MARMON SILKO I have kept a diary,
WITHNAIL AND I I learned to read and write and socialize in school, and that's pretty much it.
RICK SPRINGFIELD I needed other people in the newsroom for Kolchak to interact with, ... relationships that were goin...
FRANK SPOTNITZ As a child, I amused myself by making up stories. I'd lie in bed when I was supposed to be sleep...
VICTORIA HANLEY When I read good stories, I want to write good stories too.
SHARON CREECH There's the typical books, Moby Dick and, I guess in my adult life I began to read biographies m...
JULIUS ERVING First it was the fascinating comic book art that caught my attention, ... Later, I began to read the...
BILL PHILLIPS If we can share our stories and help other people and kind of bring attention to it, I think it bene...
TORI SPELLING I encountered a lot of people who were very distant and uncommunicative and misleading and self-cont...
DAVID NEWMAN I like to read, and I like dance. I don't dance, but I like to see other people dance.
ESPERANZA SPALDING I really began to love to read while in high school, and my favorite authors were my heroes: J.D. Sa...
LOUIS SACHAR I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES It appeared to Harriet that she was always the one who remembered having seen other people. They nev...
ELIZABETH TAYLOR As a kid when I was growing up, I remember vividly being on the roof of my family's station wagon, a...
TOM CRUISE I many times encountered courage, real courage. Undeniable courage. I've heard it said that that...
DOROTHEA LANGE You always read stories of people going out to California and making it as an actor with, like, two ...
ADAM DRIVER I used to read the criticism on blogs about other people - mostly female actresses and singers - and...
KAT GRAHAM I began dancing when I was just 5, and I never really wanted to become an actress because it's what ...
PATRICIA VELASQUEZ Are you often struck, when you become sufficiently intimate with other people to know something of t...
C.S. LEWIS I took the other road, all right, but only because it was the easy road for me, the way I wanted to ...
EDWARD ABBEY But other vampire stories? Well, no, I really haven't read too many, and I can't say I'm crazy about...
BRIAN LUMLEY When I entered the Manhattan School of Music, I felt great pressure living and studying away from ho...
YU ZHILIANG I would say that social work began in my mind in the Unitarian Church when I was ten or twelve years...
ROGER NASH BALDWIN I learned not to depend on other people. I needed support, but it's you who has to go out and de...
KATARINA WITT Sometimes, I look outside, and I think that a lot of other people have seen this snow before. Just l...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY And all the books you've read have been read by other people. And all the songs you've loved have be...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I think the reason I'm a writer is because first, I was a reader. I loved to read. I read a lot ...
ANDREW CLEMENTS Basically, I tend to see the world differently to other people, and I write books and stories to alt...
IAN WATSON We have played with each other and against each other since high school and have begun to learn each...
PAUL RABIL All the books you’ve read have been read by other people. And all the songs you’ve loved have be...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY When you label somebody and put them in a box, then you put the lid on the box, and you just never l...
STEPHANIE BEATRIZ The whole world opened to me when I learned to read.
MARY MCLEOD BETHUNE What would I have wanted to say if I had had the opportunity to see him one more time? I would like ...
LISA J. SHULTZ After going to theater school, and then subsequently dropping out, I would say that when I first wen...
THOMAS MIDDLEDITCH I have the impression that our children are much more excited about going to school than children in...
CHERYL BENARD Ever since I can remember I was telling stories and had a huge interest in other people and what mad...
CANDACE BUSHNELL I never learned anything at all in school and didn't read a book for pleasure until I was 19 years o...
STANLEY KUBRICK Other kids could read, other kids could write, other kids could spell, they could do math. I felt li...
R. KELLY My passion for that recovery began when I was in grad school. I was assigned to read the women poets...
JOANNE DOBSON Get this (economic plan) passed. Later on, we can all debate it.
, TO NEW HAMPSHIRE LEGISLATORS When I was going into the last year of my first contract and you see him and other people chasing hi...
PATRICK KERNEY When I hear other people's stories, I like to believe that they contribute to my 'Encycloped...
SARAH KAY When I began competing with the other artists in New York, I discovered classical North Indian music...
HENRY FLYNT When I was in high school, I earned the pimple award and every other gross-out award.
JACK NICHOLSON You hear the best stories from ordinary people. That sense of immediacy is more real to me than a lo...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK When I went to school, I was already reading and writing. In fact, I was offended that the other kid...
EOIN COLFER Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?
DAVID BALDACCI Why can’t people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?
DAVID BALDACCI If I've learned one thing in life, it's not to be so judgmental of other people.
PATTI SMITH Are people drawn to each other because of the stories they carry inside?
ALICE HOFFMAN Experimental science is fascinating, but I don't want to do it. I want other people to do it, an...
BARBARA EHRENREICH I have learned to read the papers calmly and not to hate the fools I read about.
EDMUND WILSON And that's what I really love, is finding a script and fantasizing and going to a different worl...
ALEX PETTYFER I like movies about longing and desperation, and dark and light things, stories about people struggl...
LAURA DERN You can spin stories out of the ways people understand and misunderstand each other.
IAN MCEWAN I read everything. I'll read a John Grisham novel, I'll sit and read a whole book of poems b...
JESSYE NORMAN . . . I lay on the bed and lost myself in the stories.
I liked that. Books were safer than oth...
NEIL GAIMAN I was in every band class I could get in, like after school jazz band and marching band, and that...
CHAD SMITH When you listen to other women's stories you begin to understand your own better and you begin t...
EVE ENSLER By not going to school I learned that the world is a beautiful place and needs to be discovered.
RUTGER HAUER When I was a boy, unconsciously, spontaneously I learned the art of telling ironic stories.
DARIO FO I never learned anything at all in school and didn't read a book for pleasure until I was 19 yea...
STANLEY KUBRICK When I entered college, it was to study liberal arts. At the University of Pennsylvania, I studied E...
ANDREA MITCHELL I've been able to get a different look at school. Going from public school to private school, I can ...
BRIANNE WOODLEY When I first started here, we'd get people in high school who'd take the SAT and we'd hope that mayb...
ANDREW ROSEN If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands, they must be made brighter in o...
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT The underlying message of redemption in James Frey's memoir still resonates with me and I know it re...
OPRAH WINFREY And I began to tell little anecdotes that had happened to me, and people would laugh. And I began to...
MEL TILLIS I live for my work, apart from my family who come first. And I live to tell stories and pretend to b...
JACKI WEAVER We owe it to each other to tell stories, as people simply...
NEIL GAIMAN In other words I not only have to read that book, I have to read everything that author wrote.If you...
JOHN IRVING The reason these things exist is because Focus on the Family and these other groups read the polls, ...
WAYNE BESEN I began having problems with Warner Bros. They were letting other people do films, and I wasn't doin...
CLINT WALKER Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories - and telling other people a somewhat differ...
ALICE MUNRO In junior high school, I learned that I could be good at school. I remember liking the freedom to ch...
CAROL W. GREIDER Working as a bookbinder, I had put covers on "The Lord of the Rings," but I never read it. It was ju...
BILLY BOYD We made sure we explained to them that they're going to help other people -- they're going to help o...
JOE PEEL The books I used to love as a kid, I used to read football books - and by that I mean soccer books -...
BEN LLOYD-HUGHES I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories,...
GEORGE W. BUSH I found college useful for a lot of other reasons. It exposed me to a great many influences I wouldn...
WALTER JON WILLIAMS I've been through a lot of moments when other people thought Bitcoin was going to implode, and i...
OLAF CARLSON-WEE I began to draw an invisible boundary between myself and other people. No matter who I was dealing w...
HARUKI MURAKAMI When I - when I was going to school, I knew how to read, write, add and subtract and I - I basically...
MARK WAHLBERG I was warmed by the sun, rocked by the winds and sheltered by the trees as other Indian babes. I was...
GERONIMO The things I learned from the army - and I think it was a lesson for life - was how to work in uniso...
ODED FEHR In 1965, when I was fourteen, I read my first adult novel; it was a historical novel about Katherine...
ALISON WEIR Back when people couldn't read, other people would take newspapers and turn them into theater so...
AJA NAOMI KING I read that the investigation is not complete. Statements have yet to be recorded from several other...
MAHATHIR MOHAMAD Each affects the other, and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the st...
MITCH ALBOM I like other people's kids and being able to give them back when I want to.
KARRIE WEBB I take the book stopped at a fold, deliver myself to its pace, to the breathing of the other storyte...
ERRI DE LUCA Fascination with horses predated every other single thing I knew. Before I was a mother, before I wa...
JANE SMILEY

More Chinua Achebe

Many writers can't make a living. So to be able to teach how to write is valuable to them. But I...
CHINUA ACHEBE A man who makes trouble for others is also making trouble for himself.
CHINUA ACHEBE The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
CHINUA ACHEBE When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we se...
CHINUA ACHEBE What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens - whether people are of a different ethnic...
CHINUA ACHEBE One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.
CHINUA ACHEBE Americans, it seems to me, tend to protect their children from the harshness of life, in their inter...
CHINUA ACHEBE I think an artist, in my definition of that word, would not be someone who takes sides with the empe...
CHINUA ACHEBE I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life...
CHINUA ACHEBE Oh, the most important thing about myself is that my life has been full of changes. Therefore, when ...
CHINUA ACHEBE The most important thing about myself is that my life has been full of changes. Therefore, when I ob...
CHINUA ACHEBE Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself...
CHINUA ACHEBE People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.
CHINUA ACHEBE Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.
CHINUA ACHEBE Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with w...
CHINUA ACHEBE While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity...
CHINUA ACHEBE Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages...
CHINUA ACHEBE Okonwko was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid pers...
CHINUA ACHEBE No man can deny that Chief the Honourable M.A. Nanga, M.P. was the most approachable politician in ...
CHINUA ACHEBE Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself...
CHINUA ACHEBE People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that's the time to do something about...
CHINUA ACHEBE I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next do...
CHINUA ACHEBE I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas ...
CHINUA ACHEBE But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic id...
CHINUA ACHEBE Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which ...
CHINUA ACHEBE The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature th...
CHINUA ACHEBE A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educ...
CHINUA ACHEBE The people you see in Nigeria today have always lived as neighbors in the same space for as long as ...
CHINUA ACHEBE The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this grea...
CHINUA ACHEBE When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry b...
CHINUA ACHEBE When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don't just turn it off one ...
CHINUA ACHEBE The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.
CHINUA ACHEBE In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a w...
CHINUA ACHEBE Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These ...
CHINUA ACHEBE I was a supporter of the desire, in my section of Nigeria, to leave the federation because it was tr...
CHINUA ACHEBE The problem with leaderless uprisings taking over is that you don't always know what you get at ...
CHINUA ACHEBE When the British came to Ibo land, for instance, at the beginning of the 20th century, and defeated ...
CHINUA ACHEBE It always surprised him when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair.
CHINUA ACHEBE The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this grea...
CHINUA ACHEBE What's important is that we recognize the falsehood of the notion that the Third World should be aba...
CHINUA ACHEBE People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what i...
CHINUA ACHEBE Stories serve the purpose of consolidating whatever gains people or their leaders have made or imagi...
CHINUA ACHEBE Democracy is not something you put away for ten years, and then in the 11th year you wake up and sta...
CHINUA ACHEBE They have not always elected the best leaders, particularly after a long period in which they have n...
CHINUA ACHEBE People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.
CHINUA ACHEBE My parents were early converts to Christianity in my part of Nigeria. They were not just converts; m...
CHINUA ACHEBE People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them ...
CHINUA ACHEBE Each of my books is different. Deliberately... I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fu...
CHINUA ACHEBE If you don't like someone's story, write your own.
CHINUA ACHEBE I've had trouble now and again in Nigeria because I have spoken up about the mistreatment of fac...
CHINUA ACHEBE My position is that serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indi...
CHINUA ACHEBE Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensiv...
CHINUA ACHEBE The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.
CHINUA ACHEBE There's no lack of writers writing novels in America, about America. Therefore, it seems to me i...
CHINUA ACHEBE An artist, in my understanding of the word, should side with the people against the Emperor that opp...
CHINUA ACHEBE Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is g...
CHINUA ACHEBE Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not d...
CHINUA ACHEBE In such a regime, I say you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and ...
CHINUA ACHEBE In such a regime, I say you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and ...
CHINUA ACHEBE And so Mr. Brown came to be respected even by the clan, because he trod softly on its faith.
CHINUA ACHEBE Ife onye metalu' ['what a man commits'] - a statement unclear and menacing in its very inconclusiven...
CHINUA ACHEBE In the vocabulary of certain radical theorists contradictions are given the status of some deadly di...
CHINUA ACHEBE ...she was sensitive enough and intelligent enough to understand, and her literary education could n...
CHINUA ACHEBE It is the story that owns and directs us. It is the thing that makes us different from cattle; it is...
CHINUA ACHEBE Charity … is the opium of the privileged; from the good citizen who habitually drops ten kobo from...
CHINUA ACHEBE It is only the story...that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of ...
CHINUA ACHEBE Procrastination is a lazy man's apology.
CHINUA ACHEBE Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!
CHINUA ACHEBE Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the rig...
CHINUA ACHEBE Charity . . . is the opium of the privileged.
CHINUA ACHEBE At the most one could say that his chi or ... personal god was good. But the Ibo people have a prove...
CHINUA ACHEBE If you don't like my story,write your own
CHINUA ACHEBE Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the...
CHINUA ACHEBE Then listen to me,' he said and cleared his throat. 'It's true that a child belongs to its father. B...
CHINUA ACHEBE The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his...
CHINUA ACHEBE Presidents do not go off on leave without telling the country.
CHINUA ACHEBE The relationship with my people, the Nigerian people, is very good. My relationship with the rulers ...
CHINUA ACHEBE I don't care about age very much. I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, a...
CHINUA ACHEBE If you had been poor in your last life I would have asked you to be rich when you come again. But yo...
CHINUA ACHEBE A snake was never called by its name at night, because it would hear. It was called a string.
CHINUA ACHEBE Some people flinch when you talk about art in the context of the needs of society thinking you are i...
CHINUA ACHEBE I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door w...
CHINUA ACHEBE I don't care about age very much.
CHINUA ACHEBE Nigera is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.
CHINUA ACHEBE I'm a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just kn...
CHINUA ACHEBE A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food...
CHINUA ACHEBE