When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool. - Chinua Achebe

What art tries to do is domesticate whatever is around and press it into the service of man. Morality is basic to the nature of art.

And now the rains had really come, so heavy and persistent that even the village rain-maker no longer claimed to be able to intervene. He could not stop the rain now, just as he would not attempt to start it in the heart of the dry season, without serious danger to his own health. The personal dynamism required to counter the forces of these extremes of weather would be far too great for the human frame.

The world is large,” said Okonkwo. “I have even heard that in some tribes a man’s children belong to his wife and her family.”

“That cannot be,” said Machi. “You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the babies.