there are two kinds of humanity, those who dream and those who don't, and both tend to despise, or to tolerate, the other.

I would not be at all surprised to find out . . . that the dimensions of buildings affect us in ways we don't guess.

The current publishing scene is extremely good for the big, popular books. They sell them brilliantly, market them and all that. It is not good for the little books. And really valuable books have been allowed to go out of print. In the old days, the publishers knew that these difficult books, the books that appeal only to a minority, were very productive in the long run. Because they're probably the books that will be read in the next generation.

Writers brought up in Africa have many advantages - being at the center of a modern battlefield; part of a society in rapid, dramatic change. But in a long run it can also be a handicap: to wake up every morning with one's eyes on a fresh evidence of inhumanity; to be reminded twenty times a day of injustice, and always the same brand of it, can be limiting.

Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot.

Hitler admired Stalin, quite properly seeing himself as a mere infant in crime compared to his great exemplar.

I have a daughter and two grand-daughters and a great grandson in Africa, in Cape Town.