Wole Talabi > Quotes

“she said something that had sent a shiver down her own spine when it first occurred to her. “But then I started thinking, what makes us think that if an AI truly made art, it would make art for us or art that was even recognizable to us?”
― Wole Talabi, Convergence Problems

“Olorun rolled his eyes. “You’ve been around enough. Europe isn’t like Asia or Africa. Border restrictions are a function of power, not security or fairness.”
― Wole Talabi, Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon

“A force slammed into the vehicle with a deafening sound like an explosion made of other explosions”
― Wole Talabi, Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon

“So, there he was, barely conscious in the back of a black cab being driven down the Haymarket road on the spirit-side of London by a man who died seventy years ago, when Nneoma finally told Shigidi that she loved him.”
― Wole Talabi, Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon

“They say you die twice. Once, when you stop breathing and again, when somebody says your name for the last time. I will not be let myself become complicit in my mother’s second death at the hands of this government. I will not be silent. I will not speak of politics or offer opinions. I will simply tell her story.”
― Wole Talabi, Convergence Problems

“Two hours into the third session of our fourth cabinet meeting on the border dispute with the co-operative kingdom of Dahomey, my colleagues finally agree that we need to seek the dream-counsel of our electric mother.”
― Wole Talabi, A Dream of Electric Mothers

“Besides, things like totems and relics and idols and masks and shrines were commonplace; just the background elements of existence, the rigorously religious tools of worship in the lives of men. They may have been made, charmed, used, broken, reclaimed, forgotten, but they always mattered to someone. It was a certain kind of savagery to keep these once purposeful items for no other purpose than display, as trophies in memoriam of a colonizer’s self-given right to take.”
― Wole Talabi, Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon