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 SOYINKAMy 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.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there’s a lot of work to be done.
WOLE SOYINKA -
No 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.
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As a global citizen, I sometimes feel like denying my identity.
WOLE SOYINKA -
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 SOYINKA -
And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.
WOLE SOYINKA -
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.
WOLE SOYINKA -
We do not ask the mountain’s aid to crack a walnut.
WOLE SOYINKA -
A human feast is an indifferent morsel to a god.
WOLE SOYINKA -
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 SOYINKA -
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.
WOLE SOYINKA -
Don’t take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
WOLE SOYINKA -
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.
WOLE SOYINKA -
Well, some people say I’m pessimistic because I recognize the eternal cycle of evil. All I say is, look at the history of mankind right up to this moment and what do you find?
WOLE SOYINKA -
It’s the place to begin, always — to return to home, literally.
WOLE SOYINKA -
I 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.
WOLE SOYINKA