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
space aliens slave
Under a dictatorship, a nation ceases to exist. All that remains is a fiefdom, a planet of slaves regimented by aliens from outer-space.
morning writing typewriters
I know there are writers who get up every morning and sit by their typewriter or word processor or pad of paper and wait to write. I don't function that way. I go through a long period of gestation before I'm even ready to write.
depression way pessimism
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.
atmosphere culture grew
I grew up in an atmosphere where words were an integral part of culture.
twilight sadness kissing
Sadness is twilight's kiss on earth.
sometimes poet
Some of us – poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes – beyond the word.
hands dip pot
The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.
quality firsts kind
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.
adventure pride giving
Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness.
thinking space throwback
Each time I think Ive created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.
lying form domination
Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.
hero perfect community
Given the scale of trauma caused by the genocide, Rwanda has indicated that however thin the hope of a community can be, a hero always emerges. Although no one can dare claim that it is now a perfect state, and that no more work is needed, Rwanda has risen from the ashes as a model or truth and reconciliation.
home return
It's the place to begin, always -- to return to home, literally.
thinking sometimes humans
Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.