Wole Soyinka
You always assume for some strange reason that you need three meals a day.
Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for.
One, a mass movement from within, which, as you know, is constantly being put down brutally but which, again, regroups and moves forward as is happening right now as we are speaking.
I don't have the sort of temperament that submits to Christianity or Islam.
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.
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.
The Lagos of my childhood was a well-laid-out maritime city.
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 blatant aggressiveness of theocracies I find distressing, because I grew up when Christians, Muslim and animists lived peacefully together.
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.
The phenomenon of creativity, we know, is closely related to the ability to yoke together separate, and even seemingly incompatible, matrices.
One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer.
In Africa, those who have money - businessmen and banks - do not believe in film.
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.
Writing in certain environments carries with it an occupational risk.
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.
There's a kind of dynamic quality about theater and that dynamic quality expresses itself in relation to, first of all, the environment in which it's being staged; then the audience, the nature of the audience, the quality of the audience.
The writer is the visionary of his people... He anticipates, he warns.
I don't really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.
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.
In the world of literature, I see prizes as more of a duty to the craft itself, rather than as something for the individual.
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.
African film makers are scraping by on a mere pittance.
But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That's all.
I'm an Afro-realist. I take what comes, and I do my best to affect what is unacceptable in society.
I'm not fond of biographies. I don't like writing about myself.
I've always written plays for the purpose of getting something out of my system.
The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.
There are different kinds of artists and very often, I'll be very frank with you, I wish I were a different kind.
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.
An excessive amount of my time is taken with political involvement. It's unavoidable; that's my temperament.
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.
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.
Military dictatorship, you can focus on it, you can fight it directly. It's a band of power-driven people.
I found, when I left, that there were others who felt the same way. We'd meet, they'd come and seek me out, we'd talk about the future. And I found that their depression and pessimism was every bit as acute as mine.
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.'
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.
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.
Some of the greatest uprisings and consequent civil wars in Mexico have centered squarely on the ownership of land.
I think that feeling that if one believed absolutely in any cause, then one must have the confidence, the self-certainty, to go through with that particular course of action.
I've done a lot of guerrilla theater in my time.
I cannot belong to a nation which permits such barbarities as stoning to death and amputation - I don't care what religion it is.
One has to confront history honestly.
All religions accept that there is something called 'criminality.' And criminality cannot be excused by religious fervour.
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.
I have a kind of magnetic attraction to situations of violence.
Well, first of all I'll say that I come alive best in theater.