Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole SoyinkaRead
No writer has a right to make that much money. Indeed, without diabolical assistance, no writer can.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote critiques the commercial aspect of writing, suggesting it often requires unethical means to achieve financial success.
Wole Soyinka's quote highlights the tension between creativity and capitalism, asserting that the literary world is not purely based on merit. It implies that substantial financial success for writers may involve compromises or influences that stray from genuine artistic integrity, posing questions about the morality of profiting immensely from literature.
Themes
WritingMoneyArtIntegrityCapitalism
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about the ethics of publishing in a workshop on creative writing.
More from Wole Soyinka
All quotes βTrading and religion have always been aligned together in the history of the world, and especially on the African continent.
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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.
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Rwanda, which is one of the younger independent states in Africa, must be regarded as a model of how great human trauma can be transformed to commence true reconstruction of people. Human trauma can lead to stunted growth and mass withdrawal.
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I have a kind of magnetic attraction to situations of violence.
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Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake.
Wole SoyinkaRead
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