Every boy needs a role model that he can be proud of and talk about to the other kids in the playground.

I'm giving up acting. . . . I'm 66 and there are a number of celebrations I've got to get down on paper, and acting doesn't allow me to do that. It was a hell of a drug, performance. It's a great thrill, especially for a storyteller. But it can go. Directing can go. Writing can't go. And in terms of what lies ahead, I want to have a burning focus - almost like smoke coming up from the paper as I write.

As fascinated as I was by words on paper, it was matched by my fascination with words in people's mouths. The spoken word. And that is the world of theatre.

My life had been defined by the apartheid years. Now we were going into an era of democracy... and I believed that I didn't have really a function as an artist, as a useful artist, in that anymore.

Anybody who thinks there's nothing wrong with this world needs to have his head examined. Just when things are going all right, without fail someone or something will come along and spoil everything. Somebody should write that down as a fundamental law of the Universe. The principle of perpetual disappointment. If there is a God who created this world, he should scrap it and try again.

What I quickly discovered is that our so-called new South Africa has as much material for a story-teller as the old one. The landscape hasn't really changed. Who is in power now is different to who was in power then, but the squatter camps grow like cancer, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

My essential identity is that of a writer.