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Frederick W. Smith
Founder, Federal Express
The solution was, in my mind, to have an integrated air and ground system, which had never been done. And to operate not on a linear basis, where you try to take things from one point to another, but operate in a systemic manner. Sort of the way a bank clearing house does, you know? They have a bank clearing house in the middle of all the banks and everybody sends someone down there and they swap everything around. Well, that had been done in transportation before: the Indian post office, the French post office. American Airlines had tried a system like that shortly after World War II. But the demand side and supply side had really not met at an appropriate level of maturation.
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Stephen Sondheim
Award-winning Composer and Lyricist
The way you get into the character -- the way you get in the song, both musically and lyrically -- is to become the character. It's the only way. I don't know how else you do it, unless you're the playwright who created the character in the first place. But I'm always writing for characters that somebody else has created, my collaborator, and so the only way I can get into I've said -- and it's probably an exaggeration, but not much -- that by the time I get through writing a score, I know the book better than the book writer does, because I've examined every word, and questioned the book writer on every word. Why does she say this? Why doesn't she say that? And that's getting to know the character. And then writing the song is acting it. So I can start ad libbing. It's exactly like improvisatory acting. So here's the character Blanche. We're hiring you to play Blanche. Okay. Just veer from the Tennessee Williams script and just start ad libbing as Blanche. If you're thoroughly in the character, you can do it. You may not have the poetry yet, but everything you say will be in the character of Blanche. That's what I do. I take off from what the book writer has written, sometimes using a line of his as a springboard, and ad lib, and improvise as that character. That's what I'm doing.
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Wole Soyinka
Nobel Prize for Literature
Wole Soyinka: I was trying to recapture certain features. Community, we spoke earlier of the community. In The Swamp Dwellers, for instance, I was trying to capture a sense of community which I'd known in Nigeria. And The Lion and the Jewel was also, again, it's a comedy of course, and it is to capture the transition between traditional society, the concept of Western, quote unquote, "civilization," and trying to see the weaknesses in either. One was not necessarily a progression on the other. These were just expressions of my own observations of society.
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Wole Soyinka
Nobel Prize for Literature
Wole Soyinka: Many people outside my own country are closer to me in spirit, and as far as I'm concerned, in blood, than many who pretend that they are leaders in my own country. Some of them, as far as I'm concerned, dropped from Mars. So I don't have any kind of a -- what you might call, basic patriotism. I lack it completely. I recognize communities. I'm very glad we spoke of communities. I recognize communities as being close to me. I'm a member of a certain community which is both internal, which happens to be located in the nation space called Nigeria, but that community also extends outside the Nigerian borders. And that community, as far as I'm concerned, is without color, without gender, without class. All those details for me are irrelevant. And they are my family, wherever they are. So Nigeria? Why should I dedicate my Nobel speech to Nigeria? Nigeria is just for me a figure of speech.
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