Quote

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.

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
Think
Choice
Thinking
Choices
Moment
Sat
Write
Africa
Moments
Immediately
Writing
Shot
Going
Shots
Mind
South

More quotes by Wole Soyinka

Image
Society itself is responsible for the degradation.
Wole Soyinka
Image
The Egba kingdom was one of the very last to be ceded to the British protectorate. It remained almost an independent entity within what is now known as Nigeria, simply because of its own traditional structure of governance.
Wole Soyinka
Image
I am a very curious person I'll always ask: is this thing true, is it not true? And I use my own means to investigate and come to my conclusion.
Wole Soyinka
Image
Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.
Wole Soyinka
Image
African film makers are scraping by on a mere pittance.
Wole Soyinka
Image
Next to the commodities of corruption, and religion, however, Nigeria is the world capital of rumour mongering.
Wole Soyinka
Image
We do not ask the mountain's aid to crack a walnut.
Wole Soyinka
Image
Some of us – poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes – beyond the word.
Wole Soyinka
Image
How do I feel when I am invited to a congregation of scientists? I feel quite at home. When they break into their cultic scientific argot, I know when I'm not wanted and step out for a drink.
Wole Soyinka
Image
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
Image
Each time I think Ive created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.
Wole Soyinka
Image
A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces.
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
Writers who open up horizons for other people are performing a function every bit as important as a consciously politicized writer.
Wole Soyinka
Image
Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole Soyinka
Image
Culture is a matrix of infinite possibilities and choices. From within the same culture matrix we can extract arguments and strategies for the degradation and ennoblement of our species, for its enslavement or liberation, for the suppression of its productive potential or its enhancement.
Wole Soyinka
Image
I grew up with a very strong sense of what is just and what is not or, to put it this way, I grew up with a keen sense of a division, the reality of a division of perception in people's lives between those who govern and those who govern.
Wole Soyinka
Image
When a leader encourages the culture of impunity, the society is lost and it makes the work harder for the rest of us.
Wole Soyinka
Image
After the death of the sadistic dictator Gen. Sanni Abacha in 1998, Nigeria underwent a one-year transitional military administration headed by Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, who uncharacteristically bowed out precisely on the promised date for military disengagement. Did the military truly disengage, however? No.
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