Never completely encircle your enemy. Leave him some escape, for he will fight even more desperately if trapped.

I suppose that it was inevitable that my word-base broadened. I could now for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading in my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of my books with a wedge...Months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.

When you start about family, about lineage and ancestry, you are talking about every person on earth.

I look at my books the way parents look at their children. The fact that one becomes more successful than the others doesn't make me love the less successful one any less.

I tell younger writers that indeed it is devastating to be rejected. You feel like the bottom dropped out of your world.

Beginning writers must appreciate the prerequisites if they hope to become writers. You pay your dues - which takes years.

In the bush, trust no one you don't know.