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But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That's all.
Wole Soyinka
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Wole Soyinka
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: July 13
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Essayist
Novelist
Philosopher
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Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole Wole Soyinka
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Lessons
Ultimate
Write
Writing
More quotes by Wole Soyinka
The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.
Wole Soyinka
Be yourself. Ultimately just be yourself.
Wole Soyinka
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.
Wole Soyinka
We wasted a lot of creative energy in that immediate post colonial era, when there was a struggle between, you know, the Cold War between the capitalism and communism. Many writers just wasted their energy and their talent because they want to be ideologically correct and of course all they produced was propaganda.
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
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
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
Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there's a lot of work to be done.
Wole Soyinka
Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.
Wole Soyinka
Romance is the sweetening of the soul With fragrance offered by the stricken heart.
Wole Soyinka
My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems, seeing a painting, listening to some music, some opera, which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being.
Wole Soyinka
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
A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces.
Wole Soyinka
Writers who open up horizons for other people are performing a function every bit as important as a consciously politicized writer.
Wole Soyinka
I cannot accept the definition of collective good as articulated by a privileged minority in society, especially when that minority is in power.
Wole Soyinka
I believe that each writer must decide in which language he or she is most comfortable.
Wole Soyinka
You accept whoever you are interacting with, directly, or indirectly.
Wole Soyinka
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 Soyinka
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.
Wole Soyinka
Intolerance 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 Soyinka
