Wole Soyinka Quotes
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I know there are other writers who sit down religiously every morning, they take their espresso, they put a clean sheet of paper there and they sit looking at that paper until they've finished or covered at least a number of those pages. No, I'm not like that. I have to be ready. It has to gestate it for quite a while and then it's ready to burst forth.
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Of course I've enjoyed having the Nobel Prize, the prestige that goes along with it, the money that came with it in particular. I was the typical, still am to some extent, impecunious writer, just struggling to make ends meet, so that, nobody's going to deny that at all. In fact, if they want to give it to me a second time, I'm standing by, ready to receive it, but it's a problem, it's a real problem and then expectations and then you have monsters like Sani Abacha who come up from time to time and who would have died a happy man if he'd succeeded in hanging a Nobel Laureate for literature.
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For me, justice is the prime condition of humanity.
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Given the scale of trauma caused by the genocide, Rwanda has indicated that however thin the hope of a community can be, a hero always emerges. Although no one can dare claim that it is now a perfect state, and that no more work is needed, Rwanda has risen from the ashes as a model or truth and reconciliation.
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One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer.
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Governance can dig itself into a huge hole and not even know it's in there.
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You cannot live a normal existence if you haven't taken care of a problem that affects your life and affects the lives of others, values that you hold which in fact define your very existence.
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The man dies in all those that keep silent.
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One, a mass movement from within, which, as you know, is constantly being put down brutally but which, again, regroups and moves forward as is happening right now as we are speaking.
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Very conscious of the fact that an effort was being made to destroy my mind, because I was deprived of books, deprived of any means of writing, deprived of human companionship. You never know how much you need it until you're deprived of it.
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The problem with literature, with writing, is that it works sometimes in terms of correction of social ills. Other times, it just does not suffice. The proof of that is the ability of a dictator to snuff out the life of a writer.
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The media must be used effectively to reach the masses. You have to find a new language in which to address the people and demonstrate what is possible.
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When I say war, I'm not talking about mental war; I'm talking about totally eliminating the obstacles to transformation of our children.
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I think most writers would like a quiet space, complete isolation, in which they control their own time. Spaces of creativity in which there's very little interruption.
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I grew up with a very strong sense of what is just and what is not or, to put it this way, I grew up with a keen sense of a division, the reality of a division of perception in people's lives between those who govern and those who govern.
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I found, when I left, that there were others who felt the same way. We'd meet, they'd come and seek me out, we'd talk about the future. And I found that their depression and pessimism was every bit as acute as mine.
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We must acknowledge that we made a huge error in satisfying the lowest common denominator of the available human potential in Nigeria and we elevated what I call the reign of mediocrity. Quite frankly, I think it is about repudiating the past, creating space for new thinking for the best of the new generation, creating both political and geographical space and going at it with single mindedness that says, 'enough of buttering, sentiments and massaging the ego of the old brigade'.
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My understanding of the creative process is simply that all cultures and all concerns meet at a certain point, the human point in which everything is related to one another. That has been my creative experience.
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For me, a writer is already being the deuce of his mission, his occupation to society.
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I think that feeling that if one believed absolutely in any cause, then one must have the confidence, the self-certainty, to go through with that particular course of action.
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We do not ask the mountain's aid to crack a walnut.
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We all have our individual artistic temperaments as well as partisanships in creative directions. And we have strong opinions on the merits of the products of our occupation.
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There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda.
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A human feast is an indifferent morsel to a god.