It’s my duty to fight those who have chosen to belong to the party of death, those who say they receive their orders from God somewhere and believe they have a duty to set the world on fire to achieve their own salvation.
Suddenly the world has run amok and left you alone and sane behind.
I cannot accept the definition of collective good as articulated by a privileged minority in society, especially when that minority is in power.
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.’
I am a glutton for tranquility.
A human feast is an indifferent morsel to a god.
If man cannot, what god dare claim perfection?
My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems, seeing a painting, listening to some music, some opera, which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being.
The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don’t consider myself a novelist.
See, even despite pious statements to the contrary, much of the industrialized world has not yet come to terms with the recognition of the fallacy of what I call the strong man syndrome.
There are different kinds of artists and very often, I’ll be very frank with you, I wish I were a different kind.
I don’t really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.
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.
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.
Even when I’m writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I’m writing for.
Well, some people say I’m pessimistic because I recognize the eternal cycle of evil. All I say is, look at the history of mankind right up to this moment and what do you find?
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.
Under a dictatorship, a nation ceases to exist. All that remains is a fiefdom, a planet of slaves regimented by aliens from outer-space.
And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.
I know there are writers who get up every morning and sit by their typewriter or word processor or pad of paper and wait to write. I don’t function that way. I go through a long period of gestation before I’m even ready to write.