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.
WOLE SOYINKAWriters are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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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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And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.
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A human feast is an indifferent morsel to a god.
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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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Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress 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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But theater, because of its nature, both text, images, multimedia effects, has a wider base of communication with an audience. That’s why I call it the most social of the various art forms.
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Everybody knows that fraternities are a normal culture in all colleges. It exists in all colleges. President Clinton was a member of a fraternity. In fact, anybody who goes to College in the United States is a member of a College fraternity. There is absolutely nothing evil or occultic about fraternity.
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The media owes the responsibility to constantly tell the public the truth.
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When a leader encourages the culture of impunity, the society is lost and it makes the work harder for the rest of us.
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I never hesitated, as a student, in embracing the necessity of violence. In South Africa, I didn’t just accept it; I looked forward to it as a mission.
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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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Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.
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I rarely use mythology for its own sake because, as a theatre person, the mythological figures are in fact humanity to the ninth degree and Yoruba mythology in particular has fascination of being one of the most humanised mythologies in the world.
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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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I don’t know any other way to live but to wake up everyday armed with my convictions, not yielding them to the threat of danger and to the power and force of people who might despise me.
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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.
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I think that feeling that if one believed absolutely in any cause, then one must have the confidence, the self-certainty, to go through with that particular course of action.
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Romance is the sweetening of the soul With fragrance offered by the stricken heart.
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Well, the first thing is that truth and power for me form an antithesis, an antagonism, which will hardly ever be resolved. I can define in fact, can simplify the history of human society, the evolution of human society, as a contest between power and freedom.
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As a global citizen, I sometimes feel like denying my identity.
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Let’s say there are prospects for a new Nigeria, but I don’t think we have a new Nigeria yet.
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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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The man dies in all those that keep silent.
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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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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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