Wole Soyinka

“Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake.”

“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.”

“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.”

“History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice.”

“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.”

“But when you're deprived of it for a lengthy period then you value human companionship. But you have to survive and so you devise all kinds of mental exercises and it's amazing.”

“Well, the first thing is that truth and power for me form an antithesis, an antagonism, which will hardly ever be resolved. I can define in fact, can simplify the history of human society, the evolution of human society, as a contest between power and freedom.”

“Given the scale of trauma caused by the genocide, Rwanda has indicated that however thin the hope of a community can be, a hero always emerges. Although no one can dare claim that it is now a perfect state, and that no more work is needed, Rwanda has risen from the ashes as a model or truth and reconciliation.”

“I take friendship very seriously.”

“There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?”

“Education is lacking in most of those who pontificate.”

“And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.”

“But theater, because of its nature, both text, images, multimedia effects, has a wider base of communication with an audience. That's why I call it the most social of the various art forms.”

“I grew up in an atmosphere where words were an integral part of culture.”

“The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.”