Wole Soyinka Quotes
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Only 4 sets of people can vote for the PDP: those who are intellectually blind; those who are blinded by ethnicity; those who are blinded by corruption and therefore afraid of the unknown, should power change hands; and finally those who are suffering from a combination of the above terminal sicknesses.
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My mind immediately shot to South Africa the moment I sat down to think what I was going to write, what I was going to say. There was no other choice.
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I believe that each writer must decide in which language he or she is most comfortable.
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Be yourself. Ultimately just be yourself.
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We do not ask the mountain's aid to crack a walnut.
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Governance can dig itself into a huge hole and not even know it's in there.
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My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems, seeing a painting, listening to some music, some opera, which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being.
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One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer.
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I don't really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.
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A human feast is an indifferent morsel to a god.
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We live in a materialist world, and materialism appeals so strongly to humanity, no matter where.
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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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Pity you can't be present during my periodic fault-finding sessions with my image in the mirror!
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I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper.
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Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.
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People say human nature is a very vague expression, people tend to say human nature is corruptible anyway and it comes from a theological point of view, goes back to the Garden of Eden, that there is always this corrupt gene waiting to be activated that we inherited from the very beginning. I don't believe in that theological excuse.
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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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We wasted a lot of creative energy in that immediate post colonial era, when there was a struggle between, you know, the Cold War between the capitalism and communism. Many writers just wasted their energy and their talent because they want to be ideologically correct and of course all they produced was propaganda.
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I think I'm a very lazy writer and by that I mean that I do not battle, I don't struggle too hard against it. If I have difficulties in the writing, I just go and do other things. I don't feel a compulsion to write.
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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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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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For me, a writer is already being the deuce of his mission, his occupation to society.
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The idea of having to make constant reference to politics is anathema to my calling as a writer.
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For me, justice is the prime condition of humanity.