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" You go to conferences, and your fellow African intellectuals - and even heads of state - they all say: 'Nigeria is a big disappointment. It is the shame of the African continent.' "

Wole Soyinka

You

Say

Big

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

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

" 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

" 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. "

" I take friendship very seriously. "

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

" Just like birds, hunters know no borders. "

" 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, so there was no definite moment when I said, 'Now I'm a writer.' I've always been a writer. "

" 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. "

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

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

" But when you're deprived of it for a lengthy period then you value human companionship. But you have to survive and so you devise all kinds of mental exercises and it's amazing. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

Wole Soyinka

Depression

Meet

" 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. "

Wole Soyinka

Process

Time

" I'm an Afro-realist. I take what comes, and I do my best to affect what is unacceptable in society. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" I like my peace and quiet whenever I can grab it. "

Wole Soyinka

I Can

Quiet

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

" 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. "

Wole Soyinka

Reading

Music

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

" The blatant aggressiveness of theocracies I find distressing, because I grew up when Christians, Muslim and animists lived peacefully together. "

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

" The writer is the visionary of his people... He anticipates, he warns. "

Wole Soyinka

Visionary

People

" 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. "