Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole SoyinkaRead
No writer has a right to make that much money. Indeed, without diabolical assistance, no writer can.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote critiques the commercial aspect of writing, suggesting it often requires unethical means to achieve financial success.
Wole Soyinka's quote highlights the tension between creativity and capitalism, asserting that the literary world is not purely based on merit. It implies that substantial financial success for writers may involve compromises or influences that stray from genuine artistic integrity, posing questions about the morality of profiting immensely from literature.
Themes
WritingMoneyArtIntegrityCapitalism
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about the ethics of publishing in a workshop on creative writing.
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
You are just as qualified as any expert to make a judgment and have a feeling or a response to any work of art.
Bill ViolaRead
I believe that music is a spiritual language. My everyday self is pretty mundane and boring, but when I'm making music it allows for me to communicate a kind of transcendence that I can't communicate otherwise.
Sufjan StevensRead
Reality is the richest thing there is, the most important thing there is. Our imagination allows us to live an artificial life that is wonderful, extremely rich, but I don't believe any artist would dare to say that artifice is better than real life.
Mario Vargas LlosaRead
You do something on television, and so many people see it that it follows you around. It's interesting. I've done a couple of things on TV, and probably more people saw me than in all the movies I've made.
Christopher WalkenRead
I always think first about the nature of the story. When I had the idea for 'The Namesake,' I felt that it had to be a novel - it couldn't work as a story.
Jhumpa LahiriRead
I want the ballet world to be given the respect that it deserves and to be seen by more people - for so many to experience the beauty that I've received from the ballet world.
Misty CopelandRead