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" I'm not one of those writers I learned about who get up in the morning, put a piece of paper in their typewriter machine and start writing. That I've never understood. "
Wole Soyinka
Start
Writing
Paper
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" Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie. "
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" We Nigerians must reclaim our sovereignty, our civic entitlements. "
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" 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. "
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" I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper. "
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" An excessive amount of my time is taken with political involvement. It's unavoidable; that's my temperament. "
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" 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. "
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" I've done a lot of guerrilla theater in my time. "
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" Writing in certain environments carries with it an occupational risk. "
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" No human is completely fearless. "
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" But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That's all. "
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" 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. "
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" The Nation of Islam provides an antidote in the United States to fundamentalist Islam - which is why individuals from America have to go abroad to find radical teachings. "
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" Each time I think I've created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space. "
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" Military dictatorship, you can focus on it, you can fight it directly. It's a band of power-driven people. "
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" 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. "
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" The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail. "
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" No writer has a right to make that much money. Indeed, without diabolical assistance, no writer can. "
Wole Soyinka
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" Politics, I believe, is a full-time occupation. "
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" 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. "
Wole Soyinka
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" The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist. "
Wole Soyinka
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" There are different kinds of artists and very often, I'll be very frank with you, I wish I were a different kind. "
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" I've always written plays for the purpose of getting something out of my system. "
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" Some of the greatest uprisings and consequent civil wars in Mexico have centered squarely on the ownership of land. "
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Greatest
Land
Mexico
" The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny. "
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Silent
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" 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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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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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. "
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" The phenomenon of creativity, we know, is closely related to the ability to yoke together separate, and even seemingly incompatible, matrices. "
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" And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others. "
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