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" I am convinced that Nigeria would have been a more highly developed country without the oil. I wished we'd never smelled the fumes of petroleum. "

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" 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. "

" Some of the greatest uprisings and consequent civil wars in Mexico have centered squarely on the ownership of land. "

" Education is lacking in most of those who pontificate. "

" You cannot live a normal existence if you haven't taken care of a problem that affects your life and affects the lives of others, values that you hold which in fact define your very existence. "

" Some people think the Nobel Prize makes you bullet-proof. I never had that illusion. "

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

" The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism. "

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

" My understanding of the creative process is simply that all cultures and all concerns meet at a certain point, the human point in which everything is related to one another. That has been my creative experience. I never know who's influencing me at any time. "

" The Sudanese government has been playing games with the world, with the Africa Union, in particular, have been playing for time in order to conclude its mission of ethnic cleansing in the Sudan. "

" Probably to me the greatest singer, female voice, is Billie Holiday. And one of the most moving for me, I don't know why - maybe it's nostalgia, maybe because my life is one of constant partying, whatever. "

" 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. "

" 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 is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter? "

" We Nigerians must reclaim our sovereignty, our civic entitlements. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for. "

" Just like birds, hunters know no borders. "

" I have a kind of magnetic attraction to situations of violence. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" For me, justice is the prime condition of humanity. "

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

" The Lagos of my childhood was a well-laid-out maritime city. "

" 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. "

" Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake. "

" I'm not fond of biographies. I don't like writing about myself. "