About Wole Soyinka: Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Babatunde Soyinka is a Nigerian playwright and poet. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored in that category.
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.
When I write plays, I'm already seeing the shapes on stage, of the actors and their interaction, and so on and so forth. I don't think I've ever written one play as an abstract piece, as a literary piece, floating in the air somewhere, to be flushed ...
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.'
The problem with literature, with writing, is that it works sometimes in terms of correction of social ills. Other times, it just does not suffice.
The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.
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.
I'm not fond of biographies. I don't like writing about myself.
I don't have the sort of temperament that submits to Christianity or Islam.
In the world of literature, I see prizes as more of a duty to the craft itself, rather than as something for the individual.
England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it.
We Nigerians must reclaim our sovereignty, our civic entitlements.
The phenomenon of creativity, we know, is closely related to the ability to yoke together separate, and even seemingly incompatible, matrices.
There's something about the theater which makes my fingertips tingle.
Very conscious of the fact that an effort was being made to destroy my mind, because I was deprived of books, deprived of any means of writing, deprived of human companionship. You never know how much you need it until you're deprived of it.
African film makers are scraping by on a mere pittance.
I've always written plays for the purpose of getting something out of my system.
You always assume for some strange reason that you need three meals a day.
Writers and intellectuals have a duty to humanity. It is to insist that the human entity remains the primary asset in overall development; thus, it must be safeguarded.
There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda. Propaganda can be written by anybody, including dictators.
One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer.
The blatant aggressiveness of theocracies I find distressing, because I grew up when Christians, Muslim and animists lived peacefully together.
