African Writer Quotes

#1. There is no living African writer who has not had to, or will not have to, contend with Achebe's work. We are either resisting him - stylistically, politically, or culturally - or we are writing toward him. #Quote by Chris Abani

#2. Because books saved my life, literally, I've become close to them #Quote by Malebo Sephodi

#3. Literature doesn't have a country. Shakespeare is an African writer. His Falstaff, for example, is very African in his appetite for life, his largeness of spirit. The characters of Turgenev are ghetto dwellers. Dickens characters are Nigerians. #Quote by Ben Okri

#4. I'm an immigrant writer, or an African writer, or an Ethiopian-American writer, and occasionally an American writer according to the whims and needs of my interpreters. #Quote by Dinaw Mengestu

#5. Oh, I love labels, as long as they are numerous. I'm an American writer. I'm a Nigerian writer. I'm a Nigerian American writer. I'm an African writer. I'm a Yoruba writer. I'm an African American writer. #Quote by Teju Cole

#6. Shakespeare is in many ways an African writer and 'Hamlet' would be seen as a very accurate historical saga about an African kingdom. #Quote by Henning Mankell

#7. People in power will lie to keep it. Honesty doesn't make you less human. #Quote by Henry Johnson Jr

#8. If you are writing and no-one reads it, are you a writer, or you just writing? #Quote by Matt Drabble

#9. Don't mourn over the past,
it has no pity for you.
Don't cry over the present,
it has no sympathy for you;
and don't weep over the future,
it has no mercy on you.

You can mourn for the past,
but it has already gone.
You can cry over the present,
but it has already arrived;
and you can weep over the future,
but it was already within you. #Quote by Matshona Dhliwayo

#10. Today`s culture is unfortunately inseparable from economic and military power. A ruling nation can impose its culture and give a worldwide fame to a second-rate writer like (Ernest Hemingway). (John Steinbeck) is important due to American guns. Had (John Dos Passos) and (William Faulkner) been born in Paraguay or in Turkey, who`d read them? #Quote by Luis Bunuel

#11. Being in L.A., it was really hard to find a country writer and producer. I eventually - years of searching - found this guy, Dan Franklin. He's an incredible musician and producer. We write so well together ... It's been a really cool experience. #Quote by Sasha Pieterse

#12. A writer falls in love with an idea and gets carried away. #Quote by Doris Lessing

#13. I have never stopped considering not becoming a writer. #Quote by Joshua Ferris

#14. Richard Curtis, the writer and director of Love Actually, is brilliant at many things, but his genius, I submit, is for thrusting characters into situations in which they feel driven to humiliate themselves. Which is why we love them, especially when it's all in the name of love. He is the Bard of Embarrassment. #Quote by David Edelstein

#15. I read on the back cover that the author was born in Russia and came to America when she was young. She barely spoke English, but she wanted to be a great writer. I thought that was very admirable, so I sat down and tried to write a story.
"Ian MacArthur is a wonderful sweet fellow who wears glasses and peers out of them with delight."
That was the first sentence. The problem was that I just couldn't think of the next one. #Quote by Stephen Chbosky

#16. Travel for a writer means placing diamonds in memory. #Quote by Kevin R. Hill

#17. The word which is best said came nearest to not being spoken at all, for it is cousin to a deed which the speaker could have better done. Nay, almost it must have taken the place of a deed by some urgent necessity, even by some misfortune, so that the truest writer will be some captive knight, after all. And perhaps the fates had such a design, when, having stored Raleigh so richly with the substance of life and experience, they made him a fast prisoner, and compelled him to make his words his deeds, and transfer to his expression the emphasis and sincerity of his action. #Quote by Henry David Thoreau

#18. If you don't write with the reader in mind, you are not a writer, period. #Quote by Tom Grimes

#19. My life had been like a painter who climbs up a road overhanging a lake that is hidden from view by a screen of rocks and trees. Through a gap he glimpses it, he has it all there in front of him, he takes up his brushes. #Quote by Marcel Proust

#20. Images of African Americans as bad mothers, ineffective mothers, and matriarchs...conceal and justify the difficult conditions in which they work and raise children. But oddly enough, these same women, who are said to run amok in their own communities, are thought to be entirely competent at parenting the children of the elite-as mammies during slavery, as domestic workers during segregation, or as child care workers today. #Quote by Leith Mullings

#21. She accused him of having grandiose ideas and sloppy habits, a fatal combination for a writer. #Quote by Isabel Allende

#22. The final option to have your book completed is to hire a ghost writer. The challenge with this option is that it is important to note that your voice IS an integral part of your branding. When you hire someone else, what your readers will ultimately get is their voice. When they see you later at your website or on your social media, your voice will not be the same. This will trigger a feeling of inconsistency when relationships need to be built upon trust and authenticity. Your audience will eventually come to think you are not the "real deal" and will find another to replace you. Finally, your book is a springboard and launching pad to greater things such as speaking, interviews, a product line, etc. Will your ghost writer be available for all of that as well? How will you be able to "ghost write" your way through an interview? Hence the reason I stress speaking in your own voice. You may think you are not perfect, but your authenticity will speak in volumes to your followers and they will be customers for life if they see your true being. #Quote by Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

#23. AL ALCORN. Chief engineer at Atari, who designed Pong and hired Jobs. GIL AMELIO. Became CEO of Apple in 1996, bought NeXT, bringing Jobs back. BILL ATKINSON. Early Apple employee, developed graphics for the Mac intosh. CHRISANN BRENNAN. Jobs's girlfriend at Homestead High, mother of his daughter Lisa. LISA BRENNAN-JOBS. Daughter of Jobs and Chrisann Brennan, born in 1978; became a writer in New York City. NOLAN BUSHNELL. Founder of Atari and entrepreneurial role model for #Quote by Walter Isaacson

#24. Avoid the suave flow of prose that's the trademark of the glib writer. An easy and smooth style is all very well, but it takes no chances and has no seductive wrinkles, no pauses for thought. #Quote by Guy Davenport

#25. Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. #Quote by Gore Vidal

#26. I am a gay writer, but I am also a Scottish writer and some days a lazy writer, or a funny writer. Being gay is just a part of who I am. #Quote by Damian Barr

#27. What are we going to say if tomorrow it occurs to some African state to send its agents into Mississippi and to kidnap one of the leaders of the segregationist movement there? And what are we going to reply if a court in Ghana or the Congo quotes the Eichmann case as precedent? #Quote by Hannah Arendt

#28. A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It's almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments. #Quote by Alain De Botton

#29. A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid. #Quote by William Faulkner

#30. The Future is an illusion because, at the most fundamental level, Choice is an illusion. I am a believer in the theory, popular among physicists, that every time there is a Choice, the universe splits: both choices come to pass, but in now-separate universes. And so on, and on, with every choice of every particle, every atom, every molecule, every cell, every being, coming into being. In this universe of universes, everything happens, and every combination of things happens. Our universe is a mote of dust in an ever-growing dust-storm of possibilities, but each mote of dust in that storm is generating its own dust-storm of possibilities every instant, the motes of which in turn... But you get the general impression. Indeed to think of ourselves as single selves, and our universe as a single universe, is to be blinded, by the limitations of our senses and our consciousness, to the infinite-faceted truth: that we are infinite in a universe of universes that are each infinitely infinite..."

"An intriguingly intricate view of the world," I said (...)

Pat Sheeran nodded. "And it is astonishing how little practical difference it makes," he said. "All my other lives are as inaccessible to me as if they did not exist at all. No doubt in other universes I am a beggar, a revolutionary thinker, an academic, an accountant; a drinker, a thinker, a writer of books; I lose a freckle, gain a mole, shade off into men nothing like me at all; I have sons, fire guns, live f #Quote by Julian Gough

#31. The British are actually a lot more appreciative of the comic. In Canada, if you're perceived as a comic writer, there's a real snobbery, and you can't be serious. You're not a big hitter. #Quote by Miriam Toews

#32. You can read in the space of a coffin, and you can write in the space of a toolshed meant for mowers and spades. #Quote by Annie Dillard

#33. I think whenever a writer is really enjoying themselves and liking what they are doing, that shows on the page. #Quote by Sarah Dessen

#34. Just as the sailor yearns for port, the writer longs for the last line. #Quote by Alix Christie

#35. There's a lot of things that I've done to stick into the box set. You never have it this good. I think people should bargain. They shouldn't just buy the set, it's a little expensive [anyway]. But they should say - I'll give them dialogue, I'm a good writer. #Quote by Mel Brooks

#36. I want to be respected as a writer and, like I said, I was really sick of people saying I was a two dimensional character. I want more to my legacy, I guess. #Quote by Cakes Da Killa

#37. The writer studies literature, not the world. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. #Quote by Annie Dillard

#38. If you are a writer for a specific nation or a specific race, then fuck you. #Quote by Dambudzo Marechera

#39. I'm a good scholar when it comes to reading but a blotting kind of writer when you give me a pen. #Quote by John Millington Synge

#40. Referring to my desire to appropriate Italian, he [Domenico Starnone] wrote, 'A new language is almost a new life, grammar and syntax recast you, you slip into another logic and another sensibility.' How much those words reassured me ... They contained all my yearning, all my disorientation. Reading this message, I understood better the impulse to express myself in a new language. To subject myself, as a writer, to a metamorphosis. #Quote by Jhumpa Lahiri

#41. And at this point Pereira was reminded of an oft-repeated saying of an uncle of his, an unsuccessful writer, so he quoted it. He said: Philosophy appears to concern itself only with the truth, but perhaps expresses only fantasies, while literature appears to concern itself only with fantasies, but perhaps it expresses truth. (Pereira Maintains - 17-8) #Quote by Antonio Tabucci

#42. A struggling writer, 'I get hundreds of rejection letters each day. I am depressed with this life, Can you please help?' The Wise-man, 'No, I can't help. It is good that you are being rejected. The more you get rejection letters, the better your writing will become. Always remember, first they will reject you, then they ... ignore you, then they will laugh at you and finally, they may accept you. #Quote by Santosh Kalwar