The smell of manure, of sun on foliage, of evaporating water, rose to my head; two steps farther, and I could look down into the vegetable garden enclosed within its tall pale of reeds - rich chocolate earth studded emerald green, frothed with the white of cauliflowers, jeweled with the purple globes of eggplant and the scarlet wealth of tomatoes.

... if you have nothing, you are free to choose among dreams and fantasies.

What I did have, which others perhaps didn't, was a capacity for sticking at it, which really is the point, not the talent at all. You have to stick at it.

For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying.

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

When a white man in Africa by accident looks into the eyes of a native and sees the human being (which it is the chief preoccupation to avoid), his sense of guilt, which he denies, fumes up in resentment and he brings down the whip.

A woman writer, quitting love before literature when love lets her down, will put literature before love.