A Quote by Wole Soyinka

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. The proof of that is the ability of a dictator to snuff out the life of a writer.

Wole Soyinka

Quote Topics

Ability Correction Dictator Does Ills Just Life Literature Other Out Problem Proof Snuff Social Sometimes Suffice Terms The Problem With Times Works Writer Writing

Quote Author

Wole Soyinka
Nigerian - Novelist
Born: July 13, 1934

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.

Wole Soyinka

Writers throughout the ages have one weapon, which is literature, but they also have their responsibilities as a citizen when literature does not seem to suffice. I mean, they are not mutually exclusive. One continues to write anyway but if you are called out to demonstrate, if people are being killed in the streets, it's hardly the moment to go for your pen and paper, you know, help in one way or the other.

Wole Soyinka

Even as rigorous a determinist as Karl Marx, who at times described the social behaviour of the bourgeoisie in terms which suggested a problem in social physics, could subject it at other times to a withering scorn which only the presupposition of moral responsibility could justify.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Literature cannot develop between the categories "permitted"—"not permitted"—"this you can and that you can't." Literature that is not the air of its contemporary society, that dares not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers, such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a facade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as waste paper instead of being read. -Letter to the Fourth National Congress of Soviet Writers

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Sometimes I'll write a song. When I've gone through something really hard in my life, sometimes it's other people's music. Other times it's actually writing the songs and getting out of mind and into the song.

Jack Johnson

I guess my choice of medium depends on how I want to interpret the idea. Sometimes the interpretation works best in a photograph, and then sometimes it works best in a drawing. But most often times, with the work, everything starts with the diorama with the photograph. Then I'm just filtering out ideas and images from the photograph and reinterpreting them in other mediums.

Wardell Milan

A science fiction story is just an attempt to solve a problem that exists in the world, sometimes a moral problem, sometimes a physical or social or theological problem.

Ray Bradbury

Of course I'm a black writer... I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call "literature" is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hasidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.

Toni Morrison

Ideas for stories come in really different terms and really different ways for me. Sometimes they're from books, sometimes they're just kind of out of the air, from nowhere, sometimes they're biographical, or sometimes they're other things [everyday life].

Brian Evenson

That is exactly the writer's problem. What does literature stand for in a hungry world?

Jean-Paul Sartre

I would challenge more hip hop artists that are rapping about what it`s like to be real and the social ills that we face, if you aren`t backing Bernie Sanders, I have to question your credibility in terms of do you mean the songs you`re writing.

Killer Mike

Sometimes, what's not said is just as important to the writing as what is said. As a writer, we have our voices heard. I think that, at oftentimes, the ability to allow the dialogue to recede properly into the world of the film is also a really valid sort of way to be a writer, I think.

Joel Edgerton

I hear something I like, and sometimes, I think it's gonna work, and I will cut it up, try it out, try to work with other material. Sometimes, it falls flat, and other times, it works out, so in that way, I'm constantly listening to music because I enjoy it.

Girl Talk

I hope to be remembered for writing books about social justice that also have enough aesthetic value to endure as works of literature.

Jonathan Kozol

Sometimes, the startup game works in your favor just because you got in at the right time and right environment. Other times, you're a little too late entering an already crowded space. But startups with strong fundamentals withstand external conditions and come out ahead in good or bad times.