Extended excerpt [Fictional dialogue]: “That is a small matter,” said someone. “Four months is a short time. A debt may get moldy, but it never decays.” (p. 93)

Source: Library – No Longer at Ease (1960 – 1994 edition) International Standard Book Number (ISBN):0-385-47455-5

Extended excerpt [Fiction]:

“Having spoken plainly so far, Okoye said the next half a dozen sentences in proverbs. Among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten. Okoye was a great talker and he spoke for a long time, skirting round the subject and then hitting it finally.” (p.5)

Source: Library – Things Fall Apart (1958|2000 Heinemann edition) International Standard Book Number (ISBN) 978-0-435905-25-5

Extended excerpt: [Fictional dialogue] “Well, as usual, he left what he should have told them and launched into something quite unexpected. Charity, he thundered, is the opium of the privileged; from the good citizen who habitually drops ten kobo from his loose change and from a safe height above the bowl of the leper outside the supermarket; to the group of good citizens like yourselves who donate water so that some Lazarus in the slums can have a syringe boiled clean as a whistle for his jab and his sores dressed more hygienically than the rest of him; to the Band Aid stars that lit up so dramatically the dark Christmas skies of Ethiopia.” (pp. 154-155)

Source: Library – Anthills of the Savannah (1987) International Standard Book Number (ISBN): 0-435905-38-4

Extended excerpt [Fictional dialogue]:

“In the vocabulary of certain radical theorists contradictions are given the status of some deadly disease to which their opponents alone can succumb. But contradictions are the very stuff of life. If there had been a little dash of contradiction among the Gadarene swine some of them might have been saved from drowning.

“Contradictions if well understood and managed can spark off the fires of invention. Orthodoxy whether of the right or of the left is the graveyard of creativity.” (p. 100)

Source: Library – Anthills of the Savannah (1987) International Standard Book Number (ISBN): 0-435905-38-4

Extended excerpt [Fictional dialogue – Achebe is referencing John Acton’s famous statement “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Ellipsis original to Achebe text]:

“He did? How boring,” said Mad Medico. “You know something, Dick, the most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable and…just plain uninteresting.” (p. 56)

Source: Library – Anthills of the Savannah (1987) International Standard Book Number (ISBN): 0-435905-38-4

Extended excerpt [Conversation with American author James Baldwin]: “The total life of man is reflected in his art. And so when people come to us and say, “Why are you…you artist so political? I don’t know what they are talking about. Because art is political. And further more I’d say this, that those who tell you ‘Do not put too much politics into your art’ are not being honest. If you look very carefully you will see that they are the same people who are quite happy with the situation as it is.

And what they are saying is not don’t introduce politics. What they are saying is don’t upset the system. They are just as political as any of us. It’s only that they are on the other side.” (p. 213)

Source: Editor’s copy – Conversations with James Baldwin (1989|1992 ‘Print on Demand’ edition) International Standard Book Number (ISBN) 0-87805-388-3

Extended excerpt [Fiction]:

“Charity, he thundered, is the opium of the privileged; from the good citizen who habitually drops ten kobo from his loose change and from a safe height above the bowl of the leper outside the supermarket; to the group of good citizens like yourselves who donate water so that some Lazarus in the slums can have a syringe boiled clean as a whistle for his jab and his sores dressed more hygienically than the rest of him; to the Band Aid stars that lit up so dramatically the dark Christmas skies of Ethiopia. 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.” (p. 155)

Source: Library – Anthills of the Savannah (1987) International Standard Book Number (ISBN): 0-435905-38-4

Misattribution notes:

The origin of the proverb has been incorrectly cited to Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, after he cited it in his January 1992 speech, “Martin Luther King and Africa.”  Please see source notes for more information on the Achebe speech.

Extended excerpt [Achebe’s speech/essay.]:

“We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n’ani ji onwe ya: “He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.”

Source [Acebe’s speech citing Igbo proverb]: Library – Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays (1992 – reprint 2009) Electronic International Standard Book Number (eISBN): 978-0-307-37267-3