Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole SoyinkaRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Literature can address social issues, but it sometimes falls short of making real changes in society.
Wole Soyinka's quote reflects on the dual role of literature in society. While it holds the potential to correct social injustices and raise awareness, there are moments when mere writing fails to effect tangible change. This acknowledgment speaks to the complexity of literature's impact, suggesting that while it is a powerful tool for engagement and reflection, it may not always provide the solutions to the problems it highlights.
Themes
LiteratureSocial ChangeWritingImpactSocial Issues
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the role of arts in activism, one could reference this quote to highlight the limitations of literature.
More from Wole Soyinka
All quotes βTrading and religion have always been aligned together in the history of the world, and especially on the African continent.
Wole SoyinkaRead
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.
Wole SoyinkaRead
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.
Wole SoyinkaRead
I have a kind of magnetic attraction to situations of violence.
Wole SoyinkaRead
Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake.
Wole SoyinkaRead
Similar quotes
The novel that an author writes is often not the novel that the reader reads, and most of the 'messages' in a novel are put there by the reader. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. That's how literature functions.
Ken LiuRead
I'm not sure that it's possible to write a novel about people who don't transgress or stumble, people who don't surprise themselves with the things they do, people who can explain all their actions with perfect logical consistency. At least it's not possible for me to write that sort of novel.
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There is no future for e-books, because they are not books. E-books smell like burned fuel.
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I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.
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For me alone Don Quixote was born and I for him. His was the power of action, mine of writing.
Miguel De CervantesRead
The cry that 'fantasy is escapist' compared to the novel is only an echo of the older cry that novels are 'escapist' compared with biography, and to both cries one should make the same answer: that freedom to invent outweighs loyalty to mere happenstance, the accidents of history; and good readers should know how to filter a general applicability from a particular story.
Tom ShippeyRead