Wole Soyinka

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

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

“Nigeria has had the misfortune - no, the fortune - of seeing the worst face of capitalism anywhere in Africa. The masses have seen it, they are disgusted, and they want an alternative.”

“Before you're a writer, you're a citizen, a human being, and therefore the weapons of the citizen are at your disposal to use or not use.”

“Each time I think I've created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.”

“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.”

“Writing in certain environments carries with it an occupational risk.”

“I began writing early - very, very early... I was already writing short stories for the radio and selling poems to poetry and art festivals; I was involved in school plays; I wrote essays, s...”

“An excessive amount of my time is taken with political involvement. It's unavoidable; that's my temperament.”

“If African film makers had one-tenth the amount commanded by film makers the world over - even the amount used by so-called shoestring film makers - I think we would see quite an explosion o...”

“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 something about the theater which makes my fingertips tingle.”

“When I write plays, I'm already seeing the shapes on stage, of the actors and their interaction, and so on and so forth. I don't think I've ever written one play as an abstract piece, as a l...”

“The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.”

“I've done a lot of guerrilla theater in my time.”

“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...”

“Just like birds, hunters know no borders.”

“The phenomenon of creativity, we know, is closely related to the ability to yoke together separate, and even seemingly incompatible, matrices.”

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

“Education is lacking in most of those who pontificate.”