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
disappointment shame states
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.'
inspirational motivational believe
And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.
i-can methodical one-thing
One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer.
running world sane
Suddenly the world has run amok and left you alone and sane behind
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.
evil people looks
Well, some people say I'm pessimistic because I recognize the eternal cycle of evil. All I say is, look at the history of mankind right up to this moment and what do you find?
film makers scraping
African film makers are scraping by on a mere pittance.
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.
struggle reading humanity
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.