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I 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 Soyinka

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Wole Soyinka
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: July 13
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Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole Wole Soyinka
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More quotes by Wole Soyinka

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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
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Obasanjo has openly endorsed violence as a means of governance, embraced and empowered individuals whose avowed declarations, confessions and acts are cynically contrary to the mandate that alone upholds the legitimacy and dignity of his office.
Wole Soyinka
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But when you're deprived of it for a lengthy period then you value human companionship. But you have to survive and so you devise all kinds of mental exercises and it's amazing.
Wole Soyinka
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History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice.
Wole Soyinka
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I said: A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces. In other words: a tiger does not stand in the forest and say: I am a tiger. When you pass where the tiger has walked before, you see the skeleton of the duiker, you know that some tigritude has been emanated there.
Wole Soyinka
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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
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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
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I have no money to give to you but I have ideas and organizational capacity.
Wole Soyinka
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There's something about the theater which makes my fingertips tingle.
Wole Soyinka
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One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer.
Wole Soyinka
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I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper.
Wole Soyinka
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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
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And gradually they're beginning to recognize the fact that there's nothing more secure than a democratic, accountable, and participatory form of government. But it's sunk in only theoretically, it has not yet sunk in completely in practical terms.
Wole Soyinka
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Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there's a lot of work to be done.
Wole Soyinka
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My interest in culture generally is a comparative one, and I think that's where the word joy, I think, can be applicable. There's joy in actually seeing the relatedness, the connectedness of different cultures or recognising, for instance, your own culture in another or another culture in your own culture and feeling an air to all of them.
Wole Soyinka
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I found, when I left, that there were others who felt the same way. We'd meet, they'd come and seek me out, we'd talk about the future. And I found that their depression and pessimism was every bit as acute as mine.
Wole Soyinka
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I come alive when I have assisted in bringing out the printed word on the stage, you know, and I enjoy directing plays. It's a tactile process, theatre, unlike a number of other forms of the creative work.
Wole Soyinka
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Arts and the Sciences are a natural symbiosis. They stem from the same human existential impulse - exploration. Exploration of what lies beneath the surface, and re-confuguration of elements of what we call reality.
Wole Soyinka
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When I tried to create a new political party, which I stressed that this is not my party. I believe very much that there has to be a revolution and this is a party for the young.
Wole Soyinka
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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