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.
WOLE SOYINKAWole Soyinka Quotes
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I don’t really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.
WOLE SOYINKA
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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.
WOLE SOYINKA
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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.
WOLE SOYINKA
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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.
WOLE SOYINKA
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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.
WOLE SOYINKA
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Each time I think Ive created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.
WOLE SOYINKA
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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 SOYINKA
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And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.
WOLE SOYINKA
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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.
WOLE SOYINKA