Each time I think Ive created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.
WOLE SOYINKAYou accept whoever you are interacting with, directly, or indirectly.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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But when you’re deprived of it for a lengthy period then you value human companionship. But you have to survive and so you devise all kinds of mental exercises and it’s amazing.
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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.
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Arts and the Sciences are a natural symbiosis. They stem from the same human existential impulse – exploration. Exploration of what lies beneath the surface, and re-confuguration of elements of what we call reality.
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I’m not one of those writers I learned about who get up in the morning, put a piece of paper in their typewriter machine and start writing. That I’ve never understood.
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Intolerance has become, I think, the reigning ideology of the world today, the intolerance versus intolerance and it’s taken on lethal proportions.
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A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces.
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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.
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Well, the first thing is that truth and power for me form an antithesis, an antagonism, which will hardly ever be resolved. I can define in fact, can simplify the history of human society, the evolution of human society, as a contest between power and freedom.
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For me, a writer is already being the deuce of his mission, his occupation to society.
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. . . as far as the regime is concerned, well, the play is sheer terror for them. Because they feel, How dare – how dare anybody lift his or her voice in criticism against us? We have the guns. Their level of paranoia and power-drunkenness is unbelievable.
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You accept whoever you are interacting with, directly, or indirectly.
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Don’t take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
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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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We live in a materialist world, and materialism appeals so strongly to humanity, no matter where.
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I can look violence in the face and either reject or accept it.
WOLE SOYINKA






