Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.

Women often get dropped from memory, and then history.

Africa gives you the knowledge that man is a small creature, among other creatures, in a large landscape.

Mother's room, and mother's need for privacy become a valuable lesson in respect for other people's rights.

Artists are the traditional interpreters of dreams and nightmares.

Anna was saying to herself: why do I always have this awful need to make other people see things as I do? It's childish, why should they? What it amounts to is that I'm scared of being alone in what I feel.

We always seem to be surprised by events, especially by catastrophes, but also by wonderful events. Look at 1990, the year that the Soviet Union collapsed and apartheid in South Africa collapsed and the Berlin Wall came down. I don't know anyone who foresaw those events. It seems to me that as a species we are constantly trying to adapt ourselves to the unexpected. In the meantime, we talk as if we are in control, and we're not. This seems to me to be the truth about the twentieth century.