103 quotes
Nonsense, we run a bus. The seats face where you are going
The Road (1965)
No! I do not envy him!
Just one woman for me!
The Lion and the Jewel (1959)
Alfred Nobel regretted that his invention, dynamite, was converted to degrading use, hence his creation of the Nobel Prize, as the humanist counter to the destructive power of his genius.
It’s my life that’s gone into his. I haven’t burrowed so deep to cast good earth onto worthless seeds….
Madmen and Specialists (1970)
But then I am a woman. I have a woman’s longings and weaknesses.
...There are dangers in the Quest I know, but the Word may be found companion not to life, but Death.
The Road (1965)
Envy, but not from prowess of his adze.
A Dance of the Forests (1960)
Then there is also an important relationship for me between nature and artworks, perhaps because I grew up with a sensitization to the fact that nature offers the primary impulse for creativity.
Intolerance has always been with us, you know. The moment you have ideology, we have intolerance, whether it's the secular ideology or, you know ideocratic ideology, which always brings with it some kind of intolerance.
What are you? Men have killed for me. Men have died for me. Have you flints in your eye? Fool, have you never lived?"
A Dance of the Forests (1960)
There is peace in being a stranger.
If you believe in democracy, are you not thereby obliged to accept, without discrimination, the fall-outs that come with a democratic choice, even if this means the termination of the democratic process itself?
Climate of Fear (2005)
Change was impossible to predict. A tempo, a mood would have settled over the house, over guests, relations, casual visitors, poor relations, 'cousins,' strays – all recognized within a tangible pattern of feeling – and then it would happen!
Aké: The Years of Childhood (1981)
What I boast is known in Lagos, that city
Of magic, in Badagry where Saro women bathe
In gold, even in smaller towns less than
Twelve miles from here...
The Lion and the Jewel (1959)
I said: "A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces". In other words: a tiger does not stand in the forest and say: "I am a tiger". When you pass where the tiger has walked before, you see the skeleton of the duiker, you know that some tigritude has been emanated there.
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.
Sidi feels empowered by seeing her beauty for the first time in the magazine prints. She recognizes that her beauty is a commodity, allowing her agency to make a future for herself. This is a novel idea: choosing one's own future is reserved for men.
The Lion and the Jewel (1959)
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?
Death and the King's Horseman (1975)
I think the epicentre of terrorism whether you call it cesspit or whatever you want to call it, shift, if you asked me a while ago, I would have said Somalia, Somalia has quietened a bit – and I think the epicentre right now is in Northern Nigeria.
How often must I tell you, Sidi, that
A grown-up girl must cover up her...
Her... shoulders? I can see quite... quite
A good portion of—that!
The Lion and the Jewel (1959)