Quotes from Wole Soyinka

Things do not always happen as one plans. There are many disappointments in life. There is always the unexpected. You plan carefully, you decide on one step after another, and then...well, that is life. We are not God. So you see, one cannot afford to be weighed down by the unexpected. You will find that only determination will bring one through, sheer determination. And faith in God. Don't ever neglect your prayers....

of unseasonal but nonetheless good tidings.

The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.-Wole Soyinka

A tiger doesn't proclaim its tigerness; it jumps on its prey

The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.

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.

Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness.

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.

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.

The Nation of Islam provides an antidote in the United States to fundamentalist Islam - which is why individuals from America have to go abroad to find radical teachings.

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

You cannot live a normal existence if you haven't taken care of a problem that affects your life and affects the lives of others, values that you hold which in fact define your very existence.

For me, justice is the prime condition of humanity.

Some people think the Nobel Prize makes you bullet-proof. I never had that illusion.

In the world of literature, I see prizes as more of a duty to the craft itself, rather than as something for the individual.

Military dictatorship, you can focus on it, you can fight it directly. It's a band of power-driven people.

Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there's a lot of work to be done.

I don't have the sort of temperament that submits to Christianity or Islam.

No human is completely fearless.

The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.

Education is lacking in most of those who pontificate.

There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?

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.

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