Wole Soyinka Quotes
"Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Company, Writing)
"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."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Man, World)
"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
(Related: Companionship, Value)
"I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Words)
"I don't really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Accident)
"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
(Related: Pessimism, Depression, Future, Talk)
"I grew up in an atmosphere where words were an integral part of culture."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Culture, Words)
"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."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Action, Cause, Confidence, Feeling, Self)
"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."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Machine, Writers, Writing)
"Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there's a lot of work to be done."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Work, People, Faces, Feeling)
"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."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Music, Being, Humanity, Listening, Nothing, Opera, Painting, Poems, Reading, Struggle, Writers)
"One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Writer)
"Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Power, Truth, Lie, Control)
"Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Truth, Books, Terror, Writing)
"The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Absence, Criticism, Freedom)
"The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Will)
"The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Accident)
"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."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Being, Now, Right)
"And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Work, Learning)
"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
(Related: Government, Beginning, Fact, Nothing)
"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."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Art, Nature, Communication, Theater)
"Well, first of all I'll say that I come alive best in theater."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: First, Theater)
"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."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: History, Power, Society, Truth, Evolution, Fact, First, Freedom, Will)
"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
(Related: Being, Books, Companionship, Effort, Fact, Mind, Writing)
"There's something about the theater which makes my fingertips tingle."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Theater)
"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."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Nature, Quality, Being, Environment, First, Theater)
"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
(Related: Artists)