I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you’re actually sitting down putting words to the paper.
WOLE SOYINKAI am convinced that Nigeria would have been a more highly developed country without the oil. I wished we’d never smelled the fumes of petroleum.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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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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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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Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.
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History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice.
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I believe that each writer must decide in which language he or she is most comfortable.
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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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Be yourself. Ultimately just be yourself.
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You accept whoever you are interacting with, directly, or indirectly.
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The youth should come together to challenge the status quo. They must not give up.
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Don’t take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
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I cannot accept the definition of collective good as articulated by a privileged minority in society, especially when that minority is in power.
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Governance can dig itself into a huge hole and not even know it’s in there.
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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.
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Each time I think Ive created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.
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You cannot live a normal existence if you haven’t taken care of a problem that affects your life and affects the lives of others, values that you hold which in fact define your very existence.
WOLE SOYINKA