Wole Soyinka Quotes (38 Quotes)

I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper.

Suddenly the world has run amok and left you alone and sane behind.

Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for.

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.

I grew up in an atmosphere where words were an integral part of culture.

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.

But theater, because of its nature, both text, images, multimedia effects, has a wider base of communication with an audience. That's why I call it the most social of the various art forms.

But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That's all.

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.

Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there's a lot of work to be done.

The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.

It's the place to begin, always -- to return to home, literally.

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.

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.

The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.

Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.

One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer.

I was placed in solitary confinement for a year and ten months out of the period in which I stayed in prison, which was just over two years.

There are different kinds of artists and very often, I'll be very frank with you, I wish I were a different kind.

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.

The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.

an opportunity for Nigerian civic society, an opportunity for the Nigerian military, and an opportunity for the international community.

Well, first of all I'll say that I come alive best in theater.

Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.

And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.

Obasanjo has acted sufficiently against the constitution to warrant his impeachment. There is more than enough evidence to warrant his impeachment.

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.

One, a mass movement from within, which, as you know, is constantly being put down brutally but which, again, regroups and moves forward as is happening right now as we are speaking.

There's something about the theater which makes my fingertips tingle.

I'm not one of those writers I learned about who get up in the morning, put a piece of paper in their typewriter machine and start writing. That I've never understood.

It's been difficult, and without a question I've had moments when I just wondered whether we're not really pursuing an impossible ideal.

I don't really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.

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.

It takes a jaundiced view of the much-vaunted glorious past of Africa. And I suppose since then I've been doing nothing but the danse macabre in this political jungle of ours.

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.

See, even despite pious statements to the contrary, much of the industrialized world has not yet come to terms with the recognition of the fallacy of what I call the strong man syndrome.

There's a kind of dynamic quality about theater and that dynamic quality expresses itself in relation to, first of all, the environment in which it's being staged; then the audience, the nature of the audience, the quality of the audience.

I think it rains; That tongues may loosen from the porch; Uncleave roof tops of the mouth, hangheavy with knowledge.