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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.

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

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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.
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A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces.
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The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.
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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.
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The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.
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I think the epicentre of terrorism whether you call it cesspit or whatever you want to call it, shift, if you asked me a while ago, I would have said Somalia, Somalia has quietened a bit - and I think the epicentre right now is in Northern Nigeria.
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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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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.
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Society itself is responsible for the degradation.
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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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Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there's a lot of work to be done.
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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.
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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 rarely use mythology for its own sake because, as a theatre person, the mythological figures are in fact humanity to the ninth degree and Yoruba mythology in particular has fascination of being one of the most humanised mythologies in the world.
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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.
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Writers - human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.
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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.
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We live in the real world - we live within a certain history of the plague that has landed on us.
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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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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