I have a kind of magnetic attraction to situations of violence.
— Wole Soyinka
I am a glutton for tranquility.
Trading and religion have always been aligned together in the history of the world, and especially on the African continent.
All religions accept that there is something called 'criminality.' And criminality cannot be excused by religious fervour.
Military dictatorship, you can focus on it, you can fight it directly. It's a band of power-driven people.
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.
I am convinced that Nigeria would have been a more highly developed country without the oil. I wished we'd never smelled the fumes of petroleum.
No writer has a right to make that much money. Indeed, without diabolical assistance, no writer can.
Some African leaders actually dare to suggest that democracy is a concept alien to traditional African society. This is one of the most impudent political blasphemies I can think of.
History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice.
You always assume for some strange reason that you need three meals a day.
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.'
Just like birds, hunters know no borders.
I don't know any other way to live but to wake up every day armed with my convictions, not yielding them to the threat of danger and to the power and force of people who might despise me.
Some people think the Nobel Prize makes you bullet-proof. I never had that illusion.
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.
I take friendship very seriously.
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.
The Sudanese government has been playing games with the world, with the Africa Union, in particular, have been playing for time in order to conclude its mission of ethnic cleansing in the Sudan.
We live in a materialist world, and materialism appeals so strongly to humanity, no matter where.
I'm an Afro-realist. I take what comes, and I do my best to affect what is unacceptable in society.
I love beauty. But I like the beauty accidentally, not dished up, served up on a platter.
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.
Politics, I believe, is a full-time occupation.
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.
The phenomenon of creativity, we know, is closely related to the ability to yoke together separate, and even seemingly incompatible, matrices.
I'm not sure I'm trying to communicate a message. I'm just trying to be part of the movement away from the unacceptable present.
Nigeria has had the misfortune - no, the fortune - of seeing the worst face of capitalism anywhere in Africa. The masses have seen it, they are disgusted, and they want an alternative.
I've done a lot of guerrilla theater in my time.
An excessive amount of my time is taken with political involvement. It's unavoidable; that's my temperament.
No human is completely fearless.
A tiger does not shout its tigritude, it acts.
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.
One has to confront history honestly.
There is something really horrific for any human being who feels he is being consumed by other people. I'm talking about a writer's critics, who don't address what you've written, but want to probe into your existence and magnify the trivia of your life without any sense of humor, without any sense of context.
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.
Those nations that say it's a crime to preach your religion are making a terrible mistake. All they're doing is driving underground other forms of spiritual intuitions and practices.
Writing in certain environments carries with it an occupational risk.
My understanding of the creative process is simply that all cultures and all concerns meet at a certain point, the human point in which everything is related to one another. That has been my creative experience. I never know who's influencing me at any time.
I like my peace and quiet whenever I can grab it.
After the death of the sadistic dictator Gen. Sanni Abacha in 1998, Nigeria underwent a one-year transitional military administration headed by Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, who uncharacteristically bowed out precisely on the promised date for military disengagement. Did the military truly disengage, however? No.
Some of the greatest uprisings and consequent civil wars in Mexico have centered squarely on the ownership of land.
The Lagos of my childhood was a well-laid-out maritime city.
There's no way to escape the culture that has evolved, from which we ourselves have evolved. Naturally, we stress it, break it up, reassemble it to suit our own needs. But it is there - a source of vital strength.
Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake.
In the world of literature, I see prizes as more of a duty to the craft itself, rather than as something for the individual.
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.
Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to those who seek to suppress the truth.
I don't have the sort of temperament that submits to Christianity or Islam.
I'm not fond of biographies. I don't like writing about myself.
