"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..."

"(Lakunle, 5)"

"Bush-girl you are, bush girl you'll always be; / Uncivilized and primitive—bush-girl!"

"(Lakunle, 9)"

"My Ruth, my Rachel, Esther, Bathsheba / Thou sum of fabled perfections / From Genesis to Revelations"

"(Lakunle, 20)"

"Sadiku, I am young and brimming; he is spent. / I am the twinkle of a jewel / But he is the hind-quarters of a lion!"

"(Sidi, 23)"

"No! I do not envy him! / Just one woman for me!"

"(Lakunle, 26)"

"To husband his wives surely ought to be / A man's first duties—at all times."

"(Sidi, 47)"

"I do not hate progress, only its nature / Which makes all roofs and faces look the same."

"(Baroka, 52)"

"Moreover, I will admit, / It solves the problem of her bride-price too. / A man must live or fall by his true / Principles. That, I had sworn, / Never to pay."

"(Lakunle, 61)"

"Lakunle, last seen, having freed himself of Sadiku, clearing a space for the young girl."

"(Soyinka, 64)"

"The accumulated heritage—that is what we are celebrating. Mali. Chaka. Songhai. Glory. Empires."

"I see we’ve got another of the good old days. Obaneji [on the contrary]."

"Will you take my case?"

"When you see a man hurrying, he has got a load on his back. Do you think I live emptily that I will take another's cause for pay or mercy?"

"The world is big, but the dead are bigger"

"Trouble me no further. The fooleries of beings whom I have fashioned closer to me weary and distress me. Yet I must persist, knowing that nothing is ever altered. My secret is my eternal burden—to pierce the encrustations of soul-deadening habit, and bare the mirror of original nakedness—knowing full well, it is all futility."

"We must remember that the only true giants are those who walk with the people, not over them."

"Ideas, like everything else, can be corrupted. Power is like that: it pollutes everything it touches."

"Power is transient, but the deeds of those who wield it can leave an indelible mark on history."

"We are the giants who bestride the world like a colossus, while others are mere mortals."

"The ground that man walks on, has it not always been there?"

"Man is a bird without wings and a tree without roots."

"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!"

"It is time to commence the mental shifts for admittance to yet another irrational world of adults and their discipline"

"Wild Christian shushed him, but I saw no difference in both their attitudes. I was overwhelmed by only one fact- there was neither justice nor logic in the world of grown-ups"

"Yes, you know damned well what you should have done if you sincerely desired their surrender. You could have dropped it [the atom bomb] on one of their mountains, even in the sea, anywhere they could see what would happen if they persisted in the war, but you chose instead to drop it on peopled cities. I know you, the white mentality: Japanese, Chinese, Africans, we are all subhuman. You would drop an atom bomb on Abeokuta or any of your colonies if it suited you"

"Things do not always happen as one plans. There are many disappointments in life. There is always the unexpected. You plan carefully, you decide on one step after another, and then...well, that is life. We are not God. So you see, one cannot afford to be weighed down by the unexpected. You will find that only determination will bring one through, sheer determination. And faith in God. Don't ever neglect your prayers...."

"Because he could not bear to let honour fly out of doors, he stopped it with his life. The son has proved the father Elesin, and there is nothing left in your mouth to gnash but infant gums."

"Then I slowly realised that your greatest art is the art of survival. But at least have the humility to let others survive in their own way."

"Is there now a streak of light at the end of the passage, a light I dare not look upon?"

"You know this business has to be stopped, Simon. And you are the only man who can do it."

"When they get this way there is nothing you can do. It's simply hammering against a brick wall."

"This market is my roost. When I come among the women I am a chicken with a hundred mothers."

"A tiger doesn't proclaim his tigritude, he pounces"

"I have always held the view that when you have that situation, you must refuse to be part of it"

"For me, justice is the first condition of humanity."

"Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't going away"