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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

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Wole Soyinka
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: July 13
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Philosopher
Playwright
Poet
Professor
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Writer
Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole Wole Soyinka
Writing
Battle
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More quotes by Wole Soyinka

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The British inclined more towards the feudal mentality, the feudal structures rather than the more radical progressive elements who would re-shape society and institute pretty egalitarian systems of governance with opportunity for even disadvantaged people and so I found that decolonisation was not just the end of political struggle in Nigeria.
Wole Soyinka
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When you fight corruption, corruption strikes back and that is the truth because when you fight corruption, you get confidence and when it gets to impunity, then it gets aggressive and says, 'oh, so you think you are different? You think you are tough and different?' This is why some of us are almost permanently in the libel court.
Wole Soyinka
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There's something about the theater which makes my fingertips tingle.
Wole Soyinka
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My understanding of the creative process is simply that all cultures and all concerns meet at a certain point, the human point in which everything is related to one another. That has been my creative experience.
Wole Soyinka
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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.
Wole Soyinka
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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.
Wole Soyinka
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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
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Writers who open up horizons for other people are performing a function every bit as important as a consciously politicized writer.
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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There are different kinds of artists and very often, I'll be very frank with you, I wish I were a different kind.
Wole Soyinka
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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.
Wole Soyinka
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There's a lot of insincerity about the actions of our legislators they create distractions - like this anti-gay law you alluded to - and try to mobilise, to exacerbate people's emotions. Until the legislators started making laws, people minded, generally, their own business.
Wole Soyinka
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A human feast is an indifferent morsel to a god.
Wole Soyinka
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The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.
Wole Soyinka
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The media must be used effectively to reach the masses. You have to find a new language in which to address the people and demonstrate what is possible.
Wole Soyinka
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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
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I can look violence in the face and either reject or accept it.
Wole Soyinka
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Very conscious of the fact that an effort was being made to destroy my mind, because I was deprived of books, deprived of any means of writing, deprived of human companionship. You never know how much you need it until you're deprived of it.
Wole Soyinka
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To achieve any change in the minds of the youth, there must be reorientation in terms of materialistic tendencies, corruption and crime generally.
Wole Soyinka
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And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.
Wole Soyinka