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.
WOLE SOYINKAMythology can be used, and has been used, even to re-state, you know, the very urgent problems of the world.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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For me, justice is the prime condition of humanity.
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I don’t really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.
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Mythology can be used, and has been used, even to re-state, you know, the very urgent problems of the world.
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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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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.
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My father used to tell me stories before I fell asleep. When the children would gather, at a certain point, I had a tendency to make up my own elementary variations on stories I had heard, or to invent totally new ones.
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Some of us – poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes – beyond the word.
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Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.
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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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There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?
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As a global citizen, I sometimes feel like denying my identity.
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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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Well, some people say I’m pessimistic because I recognize the eternal cycle of evil. All I say is, look at the history of mankind right up to this moment and what do you find?
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Religion has really spawned some monsters. It always has, historically. Go all the way back to the Inquisition, you know, the Crusades, the Jehad and so on.
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If man cannot, what god dare claim perfection?
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