I said: “A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces”. In other words: a tiger does not stand in the forest and say: “I am a tiger”. When you pass where the tiger has walked before, you see the skeleton of the duiker, you know that some tigritude has been emanated there.
WOLE SOYINKASome of us – poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes – beyond the word.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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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.
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The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.
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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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For me, a writer is already being the deuce of his mission, his occupation to society.
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Some of us – poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes – beyond the word.
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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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I am a very curious person; I’ll always ask: is this thing true, is it not true? And I use my own means to investigate and come to my conclusion.
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The media owes the responsibility to constantly tell the public the truth.
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I believe that each writer must decide in which language he or she is most comfortable.
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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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When you are looking for corruption, you should look at the entire stratum of the society, while some forms of corruption are direct, others are indirect.
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There is something really horrific for any human being who feels he is being consumed by other people.
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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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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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I know there are writers who get up every morning and sit by their typewriter or word processor or pad of paper and wait to write. I don’t function that way. I go through a long period of gestation before I’m even ready to write.
WOLE SOYINKA