Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Babatunde Soyinkais a Nigerian playwright and poet. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored in that category...
NationalityNigerian
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth13 July 1934
CityAbeokuta, Nigeria
CountryNigeria
Writing in certain environments carries with it an occupational risk.
blatant grew peacefully
The blatant aggressiveness of theocracies I find distressing, because I grew up when Christians, Muslim and animists lived peacefully together.
money
No writer has a right to make that much money. Indeed, without diabolical assistance, no writer can.
excessive taken time
An excessive amount of my time is taken with political involvement. It's unavoidable; that's my temperament.
centered civil mexico wars
Some of the greatest uprisings and consequent civil wars in Mexico have centered squarely on the ownership of land.
assume meals
You always assume for some strange reason that you need three meals a day.
driving forms intuitions nations preach religion terrible
Those nations that say it's a crime to preach your religion are making a terrible mistake. All they're doing is driving underground other forms of spiritual intuitions and practices.
written
I've always written plays for the purpose of getting something out of my system.
advantage both call education might processes western
My father was a schoolteacher, and so I had the advantage of both western educational instruction in the school, as well as what you might call the process of imbibing the traditional processes of education instruction around me.
entity insist overall primary remains writers
Writers and intellectuals have a duty to humanity. It is to insist that the human entity remains the primary asset in overall development; thus, it must be safeguarded.
allow breeding england ground none preach social
England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it.
access applied attached den home idyllic period unless weeks
An idyllic period of my existence was when I had a den attached to my home... a writing den, and no one had access to that unless they had their own special visa, applied for weeks in advance.
break escape ourselves source strength suit vital
There's no way to escape the culture that has evolved, from which we ourselves have evolved. Naturally, we stress it, break it up, reassemble it to suit our own needs. But it is there - a source of vital strength.
african alien concept dare political society suggest
Some African leaders actually dare to suggest that democracy is a concept alien to traditional African society. This is one of the most impudent political blasphemies I can think of.