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.

Love is the only energy I’ve ever used as a writer. I’ve never written out of anger, although anger has informed love.

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

I can't think of a single one of my plays that does not represent a coincidence between an external and an internal event. Something outside of me, outside even my own life, something I read in a newspaper or witness on the street, something I see or hear, fascinates me. I see it for its dramatic potential.

The things that converge in the writing of a play come from a complex of motives, a genesis shrouded in a certain kind of mystery.

Night-time is when I brainstorm; last thing, when the family's asleep and I'm alone, I think about the next day's writing and plan a strategy for my assault on the blank page.

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.