Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Babatunde Soyinkais a Nigerian playwright and poet. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored in that category...
NationalityNigerian
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth13 July 1934
CityAbeokuta, Nigeria
CountryNigeria
novelists accidents
I don't really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.
fingertips theater
There's something about the theater which makes my fingertips tingle.
skeletons forests doe
I said: "A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces". In other words: a tiger does not stand in the forest and say: "I am a tiger". When you pass where the tiger has walked before, you see the skeleton of the duiker, you know that some tigritude has been emanated there.
party believe fighting
It's my duty to fight those who have chosen to belong to the party of death, those who say they receive their orders from God somewhere and believe they have a duty to set the world on fire to achieve their own salvation.
i-can methodical one-thing
One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer.
tranquility
I am a glutton for tranquility.
exercise companionship kind
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.
aggravation novelists be-considerate
The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.
justice righteous teach
History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice.
paris black yards
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.
doe tigers
A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces
perspective indifferent humans
A human feast is an indifferent morsel to a god.
space aliens slave
Under a dictatorship, a nation ceases to exist. All that remains is a fiefdom, a planet of slaves regimented by aliens from outer-space.
depression way pessimism
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.