“Alfred Nobel regretted that his invention, dynamite, was converted to degrading use, hence his creation of the Nobel Prize, as the humanist counter to the destructive power of his genius.”

Each time I think Ive created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.

I began writing early – very, very early… I was already writing short stories for the radio and selling poems to poetry and art festivals; I was involved in school plays; I wrote essays, so there was no definite moment when I said, ‘Now I’m a writer.’ I’ve always been a writer.

And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.

What I teach is literary criticism and comparative literature and so on and that’s my function, but from time to time it’s possible for me actually to help a writer. I read something and something strikes me then, I feel I can talk to that writer about it.

You have the entire gamut of human experience captured in the mythology of the Yoruba. This is what makes the Yoruba mythology a natural source material for me in my creative endeavours.

And gradually they’re beginning to recognize the fact that there’s nothing more secure than a democratic, accountable, and participatory form of government. But it’s sunk in only theoretically, it has not yet sunk in completely in practical terms.

The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.

Mythology can be used, and has been used, even to re-state, you know, the very urgent problems of the world.

A human feast is an indifferent morsel to a god.

When I say war, I’m not talking about mental war; I’m talking about totally eliminating the obstacles to transformation of our children.

There’s a lot of insincerity about the actions of our legislators; they create distractions – like this anti-gay law you alluded to – and try to mobilise, to exacerbate people’s emotions. Until the legislators started making laws, people minded, generally, their own business.

I don’t know any other way to live but to wake up everyday armed with my convictions, not yielding them to the threat of danger and to the power and force of people who might despise me.

I can look violence in the face and either reject or accept it.

Romance is the sweetening of the soul With fragrance offered by the stricken heart.

We live in a materialist world, and materialism appeals so strongly to humanity, no matter where.

Intolerance has always been with us, you know. The moment you have ideology, we have intolerance, whether it’s the secular ideology or, you know ideocratic ideology, which always brings with it some kind of intolerance.

Talent is talent, and everybody knows somebody who has talent or ability, but they never really converted it into a productive performance for whatever reasons.

A computer scientist is a machine for converting coffee into urine.

The catalyst that converts any physical location – any environment if you will – into a place, is the process of experiencing deeply.

And that’s not going to be achieved by shouting at them to convert or they’ll go to hell.

However, we must not convert an inclination into an axiom that just as man’s perceptions cannot operate outside time and space, so his motivations cannot operate outside expediency;

Love makes money-grabbing seem contemptible; love makes class prejudice impossible; love makes selfish ambition a thing to be despised; love converts enemies into friends.

The hero and the coward both feel exactly the same fear, only the hero confronts his fear and converts it into fire.

The Court today completes the process of converting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 from a guarantee that race or sex will not be the basis for often will.