Quotes from Wole Soyinka

One has a responsibility to clean up one's space and make it livable as far as one's own resources go. That includes not only material resources, but psychological resources: the commitment of time and a portion of your mind to something when you'd rather be doing something else.

African film makers are scraping by on a mere pittance.

One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer.

We Nigerians must reclaim our sovereignty, our civic entitlements.

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

But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That's all.

I'm not sure I'm trying to communicate a message. I'm just trying to be part of the movement away from the unacceptable present.

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.

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

One, a mass movement from within, which, as you know, is constantly being put down brutally but which, again, regroups and moves forward as is happening right now as we are speaking.

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

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.

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.'

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.

Politics, I believe, is a full-time occupation.

I ceased using words like optimism and pessimism a long time ago.

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.

We live in a materialist world, and materialism appeals so strongly to humanity, no matter where.

For how would he explain to her that the sluggish bilgewater which twice, when he called the paper, lapped the receiver at the other end seemed to evoke the same squelch as her piano-key armpits.

Yes, you know damned well what you should have done if you sincerely desired their surrender. You could have dropped it [the atom bomb] on one of their mountains, even in the sea, anywhere they could see what would happen if they persisted in the war, but you chose instead to drop it on peopled cities. I know you, the white mentality: Japanese, Chinese, Africans, we are all subhuman. You would drop an atom bomb on Abeokuta or any of your colonies if it suited you!

Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to those who seek to suppress truth.

Since I've written quite a number of songs for my plays, I would like to be nominated for a Grammy

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

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