Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole SoyinkaRead
Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of audience awareness in creative writing.
Wole Soyinka highlights the idea that even in solitude while writing, the presence of an imagined audience influences the creative process. This concept underscores the vital role of connection and feedback in the artistic endeavor, suggesting that writers often consider their audience's perspective as they craft their narratives.
In practice
This quote could be used in a writing workshop to inspire participants to consider their audience.
Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Trading and religion have always been aligned together in the history of the world, and especially on the African continent.
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.
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.
I have a kind of magnetic attraction to situations of violence.
Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake.
When you are having fun and creating something you love, it shows in the product. So when a woman is sifting through a rack of clothes, somehow that piece of clothing that you had so much fun designing speaks to her; she responds to it and buys it. I believe you can actually transfer that energy to material things as you're creating them.
Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither.
I don't mind being classified as a jazz artist, but I do mind being restricted to being a jazz artist. My foundation has been in jazz, though I didn't really start out that way. I started in classical music, but my formative years were in jazz, and it makes a great foundation.
I write as if I've lived a lot of things I haven't lived.
When I look back and think how fortunate I've been to work with some wonderful people and had some marvelous experiences, then I can look at 'Star Trek' and think it's almost like the cream on the coffee. I don't approach it as anything but a magnificent plus.
Don't forget - no one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.
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