Ola Rotimi

Olawale Gladstone Emmanuel Rotimi, best known as Ola Rotimi (13 April 1938 – 18 August 2000) was one of Nigeria's leading playwrights and theatre directors.

Quotes

The Gods Are Not To Blame (1968)

• It is not changing into the lion that is hard, it is getting the tail of a lion
  • Page 7

• Kolanut last long in the mouths of them who value it.
  • Page 7

• When the chameleon brings forth a child, is not that child expected to dance? As we have made you King, act as King.
  • Page 9

• When the rain falls on the leopard, does it wash off its spots? Has the richness of kingly life washed off the love of our King for his people?
  • Page 10

• My people. Children of our fathers. Sickness is like rain. Does the rain fall on one roof alone? No. Does it fall on one body and not on another? No. Whoever the rain sees, on him it rains. Does it not? It is the same with sickness.
  • Page 10

• It is sickness that man can cure, not death
  • Page 12

• To get fully cured one needs patience. The moon moves slowly but by daybreak it crosses the sky.
  • Page 14

• By trying often, the monkey learns to jump from tree to tree without falling.
  • Page 14

• The horns cannot be too heavy for the head of the cow that must bear them.
  • Page 20

• Until the rotten tooth is pulled out, the mouth must chew with caution.
  • Page 21

• When the frog in front falls in pit, others behind take caution.
  • Page 23
• You do me great wrong, therefore to think that, like a rock in the middle of a lake, forever cooled by flowing waters, I do not know, and cannot know the sun's hotness that burns and dries up the open land.
• (p. 10)
• Have I been sleeping? If so, I am sick in the head: for only a madman would go to sleep with his roof on fire.
• (p. 11)
• Now my people, when trees fall on trees, first the topmost must be removed.
• (p. 22)
• Me an Ijekun man, a stranger in your tribe [stares at CHIEFS] when crocodiles eat their own egg, what will they not do to the flesh of a frog.
• (p. 23)
• The hyena flirts with the hen, the hen is happy, not knowing that her death has come.
• (p. 30)
• If you think you can drum for my downfall, and hope that, drum will sound, then your head is not good.
• (p. 32)
• If you think like a tortoise you can plot against me without my first cutting you down with my own tortoise tricks, then, fellow, madness is in your liver.
• (p. 32)
• Your highness, if you think to have heavy suspicion is wisdom, then your head is not well.
• (p. 32)
• Two rams cannot drink in the same bucket at the same time. They will lock horns.
• (p. 34)
• If you rise too early the dew of life will soak you.
• (p. 35)

Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again (1999)

• A man who cannot control his wife is like a chief who cannot control his subjects.
• When a man's wife is mad, the whole town knows, but when a man is mad, only his wife knows.
• A madman is like a child, he speaks the truth without knowing it.
• When a man's beard is on fire, he does not worry about whose axe is sharp.
• A man who has no respect for his wife is like a farmer who has no respect for his farm.

Hope of the living dead

• Me fight am sojar for Lugard. 1901, we take am Kontagora. West Africa Frontier Force. Me dey 1902 we take am Bauchi, go Borno. Lugard telli me...(patting himself on the back) 'Good man, good man!' 1903 - we take am Kano, take am Sokoto. Lugard make am me Corpul-one rope...
  • Page 50

• What's the man so proud about, fighting to advance British imperialism in Africa? And the two of you sitting there, encouraging such vulgar memories... From the day the White man set foot on our shores! First, Rum to our fathers: to confuse their minds. Then Rifles to shoot ourselves. The aftermath? Ruin. Slavery and external ruin!
  • Page 51

• Some people have started gathering in groups with people of their own kind. That too must stop
  • Page 22

• Multi-lingual interpretation is done concurrently among members of the group [the characters], but in subliminal whispers.
  • Page 21

• He says it's not that we don't want to be alive.
  • Page 23

Holding Talks

• Apprentice barber is sitting on the stool. Nothing to do, he is leafing through the pages of some tattered newspapers…all of which report on Talks – all spices of Talks…On the bench at the other side of the shop the Master Barber himself lies full length, face heavenwards asleep…
  • Page 1

• Poverty has also endeavoured to enlist the usefulness of a hook-up wooden radio and a standing fan - albeit a scrawny and temperamental oddity.
  • Page 1

• Large-faced, burly hunk of choice meat and big bones. He is affluently attired although with a touch of the bumpkin.
  • Page 1

• He picks up a comb from the table, blows dust and loose hair off it. But as he leans forward with the comb to dig into Man’s hair, Man jerks his head backwards, dodging the Barber’s contact. Barber’s hands halt in mid-air, himself startled.
  • Page 4

• Barber’s arm stops in mid-air. It trembles visibly. Man throws his arms up triumphantly. Starts scooping money into his pocket.
  • Page 6

• Everything really depends on our vote…any vote cast for a politician tomorrow on the basis of sheer fatherhood by birth; or of brotherhood by clan; or sisterhood by religion, is your doom and my doom.
  • Page 15

External links

• Gods Are Not to Blame
• Holding talks