A Challenge
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Ok, you folks are getting really good at figuring out the quotations I've been putting into the blog, so here's a more difficult one: "It is only the story . . . that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence."
I'll give you 2 hints.
1. It's by an African writer--a really amazing one
2. I used the quote as an epigraph in one of my novels
Feel free to challenge me with your favorite quotations!
About Chitra
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning author and poet. Her work is widely known, as she has been published in over 50 magazines, including the Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, and her writing has been included in over 50 anthologies. Her works...
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The Quote
That would be Chinua Achebe, in Anthills of the Savvanah. Indeed a brilliant writer... I just taught his story "Marriage is a Private Affair"in a lit. class. Here's one for you: "The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility."
Your challenging quote
You're right about Achebe. I used the quote in Sister of My Heart, where one of the major themes is the power of storytelling.
Yours is a tough one. I vaguely remember it--I think it's from a British play I studied in school in India--I'll have to look it up. Readers, do any of you know?
That Quote
It's Oscar Wilde, a very quotable writer if you like archness.
That's right! Algernon says
That's right! Algernon says it, doesn't he, in The Importance of Being Ernest?