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You cannot live a normal existence if you haven't taken care of a problem that affects your life and affects the lives of others, values that you hold which in fact define your very existence.

Wole Soyinka

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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
Live
Values
Affects
Life
Fact
Define
Lives
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Haven
Others
Normal
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Care
Existence
Problem
Taken

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As a global citizen, I sometimes feel like denying my identity.
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Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for.
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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.
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I can look violence in the face and either reject or accept it.
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For many playwrights, they write the plays anyway because they've got to be, the work has been started, it's got to be finished, but we all long, I think, to see the plays fleshed out on stage and I'm exactly like that. Yes, I'm not satisfied until I actually see it on stage.
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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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I believe that prizes are useful things for the disciplines, whether we are talking about chemistry or we're talking... It motivates, it, you know, inspires, it encourages and it brings, in the case of literature, it brings literature, the arts out of the ghetto.
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My mind immediately shot to South Africa the moment I sat down to think what I was going to write, what I was going to say. There was no other choice.
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I grew up in an atmosphere where words were an integral part of culture.
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Governance can dig itself into a huge hole and not even know it's in there.
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I tend to work best as a one-man Task Force, including even the roles of messenger, coffee maker and office cleaner.
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Society itself is responsible for the degradation.
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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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There are different kinds of artists and very often, I'll be very frank with you, I wish I were a different kind.
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There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda.
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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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If man cannot, what god dare claim perfection?
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I do not believe that it is necessarily the duty of the writer to give a voice to his community. If a writer is true to his vocation, to his or her vocation, the very process of creativity enlarges these human horizons. It provides insights, even when you're not writing, when your writing's not dealing with a concrete political situation.
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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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African film makers are scraping by on a mere pittance.
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