Don’t take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
WOLE SOYINKADon’t take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
WOLE SOYINKABooks and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.
WOLE SOYINKAI can look violence in the face and either reject or accept it.
WOLE SOYINKAThere’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.
WOLE SOYINKANo man beholds his mother’s womb Yet who denies it’s there? Coiled To the navel of the world is that Endless cord that links us all To the great Origin. If I lose my way. The trailing cord will bring me to the roots.
WOLE SOYINKALooking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there’s a lot of work to be done.
WOLE SOYINKAFor me, a writer is already being the deuce of his mission, his occupation to society.
WOLE SOYINKAGovernance can dig itself into a huge hole and not even know it’s in there.
WOLE SOYINKAColonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness.
WOLE SOYINKAWell, 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.
WOLE SOYINKAIntolerance has always been with us, you know. The moment you have ideology, we have intolerance, whether it’s the secular ideology or, you know ideocratic ideology, which always brings with it some kind of intolerance.
WOLE SOYINKAI 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 SOYINKAThe hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.
WOLE SOYINKAYou 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.
WOLE SOYINKAWe do not ask the mountain’s aid to crack a walnut.
WOLE SOYINKAI 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.
WOLE SOYINKA