Quote

Being the first black Nobel laureate, and the first African, the African world considered me personal property. I lost the remaining shreds of my anonymity, even to walk a few yards in London, Paris or Frankfurt without being stopped.

Wole Soyinka

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Wole Soyinka
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: July 13
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Philosopher
Playwright
Poet
Professor
Translator
Writer
Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole Wole Soyinka
Lost
Stopped
Laureate
Firsts
Considered
Shreds
Without
London
Anonymity
First
Property
Remaining
Even
Walk
Nobel
World
Personal
Yards
Walks
African
Black
Paris
Frankfurt

More quotes by Wole Soyinka

Image
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
Image
In European and American society, many pundits started to lament the death of literature looking at youth who were getting more and more attracted to sitcoms - hard, adventure films and said, our children are no longer reading, or else they're reading cartoons.
Wole Soyinka
Image
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
Image
One, a mass movement from within, which, as you know, is constantly being put down brutally but which, again, regroups and moves forward as is happening right now as we are speaking.
Wole Soyinka
Image
Each time I think Ive created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.
Wole Soyinka
Image
There's something about the theater which makes my fingertips tingle.
Wole Soyinka
Image
It's the place to begin, always -- to return to home, literally.
Wole Soyinka
Image
African film makers are scraping by on a mere pittance.
Wole Soyinka
Image
We live in the real world - we live within a certain history of the plague that has landed on us.
Wole Soyinka
Image
I think I'm a very lazy writer and by that I mean that I do not battle, I don't struggle too hard against it. If I have difficulties in the writing, I just go and do other things. I don't feel a compulsion to write.
Wole Soyinka
Image
You go to conferences, and your fellow African intellectuals - and even heads of state - they all say: 'Nigeria is a big disappointment. It is the shame of the African continent.'
Wole Soyinka
Image
. . . 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.
Wole Soyinka
Image
When you start a political party, you are creating space for yourself. So many people were shocked when they realized that I was serious and had no interest in occupying any political position, so they started to fall out one by one.
Wole Soyinka
Image
Alfred Nobel regretted that his invention, dynamite, was converted to degrading use, hence his creation of the Nobel Prize, as the humanist counter to the destructive power of his genius.
Wole Soyinka
Image
Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole Soyinka
Image
The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.
Wole Soyinka
Image
Don't feel that you have to tailor your literature a particular way to please any school of ideology. There will emerge in its own right, effortlessly, some kind of ideological direction which is a reflection of your thinking and you want your thinking, above all.
Wole Soyinka
Image
See, even despite pious statements to the contrary, much of the industrialized world has not yet come to terms with the recognition of the fallacy of what I call the strong man syndrome.
Wole Soyinka
Image
Only 4 sets of people can vote for the PDP: (1) those who are intellectually blind (2) those who are blinded by ethnicity (3) those who are blinded by corruption and therefore afraid of the unknown, should power change hands and finally (4) those who are suffering from a combination of the above terminal sicknesses.
Wole Soyinka
Image
Colonialism 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 Soyinka