“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.”

It is the human potentials that interest me. I travel and everywhere I go I am amazed at the presence of Nigerians. The intelligence, integrity, productivity, initiative.

I don’t really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.

. . . 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.

See, even despite pious statements to the contrary, much of the industrialized world has not yet come to terms with the recognition of the fallacy of what I call the strong man syndrome.

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.

Culture is a matrix of infinite possibilities and choices. From within the same culture matrix we can extract arguments and strategies for the degradation and ennoblement of our species, for its enslavement or liberation, for the suppression of its productive potential or its enhancement.

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.

I’ve never been no superficial cat.

My motive has always been just to be who I am, and play what I love- if that doesn’t get me anywhere then at least it wasn’t because I tried to be something I’m not.

I felt his eyes devour me as i moved around the room. He assessed me head to toe without blinking, and a hot ache shivered through me. A kiss would’ve been less intimate.

We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.

I forced a smile. It was the one i’d been practicing all morning. It felt tight at the edges and brittle everywhere in between.

There had never before been any star in that place in the sky.

We are been taught to be ashamed of not being ‘outgoing’. But a writer’s job is ingoing.

The freedom of speech and the freedom of the press have not been granted to the people in order that they may say things which please, and which are based upon accepted thought, but the right to say the things which displease.