Creativity is very selfish. Scandalously so, in fact.

A very close friend of mine keeps reminding me that since about the age of 50, I've been saying, 'I'm finished. I haven't got another one in me.' But somehow you do.

There is a desperate tendency to try to legislate artists, to try to lay down rules for their obligations to society. Just leave artists alone. If you are a true artist, you will have a very finely tuned moral mechanism.

For most of my writing life, I've refused to allow myself to believe that writing was a significant form of action. I always felt very uneasy about the fact that all I did was write in a situation as desperate as apartheid South Africa. Whether I was correct or not is a different issue.

I've always sensed for myself an obligation to bear witness to my time.

We compound our suffering by victimizing each other.

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