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" After the death of the sadistic dictator Gen. Sanni Abacha in 1998, Nigeria underwent a one-year transitional military administration headed by Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, who uncharacteristically bowed out precisely on the promised date for military disengagement. Did the military truly disengage, however? No. "

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" Being the first black Nobel laureate, and the first African, the African world considered me personal property. I lost the remaining shreds of my anonymity, even to walk a few yards in London, Paris or Frankfurt without being stopped. "

Wole Soyinka

Walk

Black

Lost

" I love beauty. But I like the beauty accidentally, not dished up, served up on a platter. "

Wole Soyinka

Served

Beauty

" A war, with its attendant human suffering, must, when that evil is unavoidable, be made to fragment more than buildings: It must shatter the foundations of thought and re-create. Only in this way does every individual share in the cataclysm and understand the purpose of sacrifice. "

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

" 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. "

" The problem with literature, with writing, is that it works sometimes in terms of correction of social ills. Other times, it just does not suffice. "

" Military dictatorship, you can focus on it, you can fight it directly. It's a band of power-driven people. "

" The scales of reckoning with mortality are never evenly weighted, alas, and thus it is on the shoulders of the living that the burden of justice must continue to rest. "

" 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. "

Wole Soyinka

Father

Process

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" I've always written plays for the purpose of getting something out of my system. "

" You always assume for some strange reason that you need three meals a day. "

" I don't have the sort of temperament that submits to Christianity or Islam. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda. Propaganda can be written by anybody, including dictators. "

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

" African film makers are scraping by on a mere pittance. "

" There is something really horrific for any human being who feels he is being consumed by other people. I'm talking about a writer's critics, who don't address what you've written, but want to probe into your existence and magnify the trivia of your life without any sense of humor, without any sense of context. "

" Under a dictatorship, a nation ceases to exist. All that remains is a fiefdom, a planet of slaves regimented by aliens from outer space. "

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

" Rwanda, which is one of the younger independent states in Africa, must be regarded as a model of how great human trauma can be transformed to commence true reconstruction of people. Human trauma can lead to stunted growth and mass withdrawal. "

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

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

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