Wole Soyinka

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

Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.

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.

Only 4 sets of people can vote for the PDP: (1) those who are intellectually blind; (2) those who are blinded by ethnicity; (3) those who are blinded by corruption and therefore afraid of the unknown, should power change hands; and finally (4) those who are suffering from a combination of the above terminal sicknesses.

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

I take friendship very seriously.

The scales of reckoning with mortality are never evenly weighted, alas, and thus it is on the shoulders of the living that the burden of justice must continue to rest.

I ceased using words like optimism and pessimism a long time ago.

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 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.

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 love beauty. But I like the beauty accidentally, not dished up, served up on a platter.

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.

No writer has a right to make that much money. Indeed, without diabolical assistance, no writer can.

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 out later on.

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

I like to say, 'I spend one-third of my time in Nigeria, one-third in Europe or America, and one-third on a plane.'

In Africa, those who have money - businessmen and banks - do not believe in film.

One has to confront history honestly.

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.