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
assume meals
You always assume for some strange reason that you need three meals a day.
centered civil mexico wars
Some of the greatest uprisings and consequent civil wars in Mexico have centered squarely on the ownership of land.
excessive taken time
An excessive amount of my time is taken with political involvement. It's unavoidable; that's my temperament.
money
No writer has a right to make that much money. Indeed, without diabolical assistance, no writer can.
blatant grew peacefully
The blatant aggressiveness of theocracies I find distressing, because I grew up when Christians, Muslim and animists lived peacefully together.
clean far includes livable material mind portion rather resources responsibility time
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.
degree life lived meaning
Human life has meaning only to that degree and as long as it is lived in the service of humanity.
along created disrupt private time
Each time I think I've created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.
assault becomes community connected darfur family happens human humanity tied worth
One's own self-worth is tied to the worth of the community to which one belongs, which is intimately connected to humanity in general. What happens in Darfur becomes an assault on my own community, and on me as an individual. That's what the human family is all about.
fragment human individual share shatter understand war
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.
constant female life maybe
Probably to me the greatest singer, female voice, is Billie Holiday. And one of the most moving for me, I don't know why - maybe it's nostalgia, maybe because my life is one of constant partying, whatever.
cannot
All religions accept that there is something called 'criminality.' And criminality cannot be excused by religious fervour.
figure symbolic
Seven is the magic figure, because that's a symbolic figure of my favorite deity, Ogun.
The Lagos of my childhood was a well-laid-out maritime city.