My answer is: Recognize yourself in others

People give one another things that can't be gift wrapped.

Writing is making sense of life.

You can't change a regime on the basis of compassion. There's got to be something harder.

The primacy of the word, basis of the human psyche, that has in our age been used for mind-bending persuasion and brain-washing pulp, disgraced by Gobbles and debased by advertising copy, remains a force for freedom that flies out between all bars.

In a country like South Africa, writers have nuisance value, because those of us who have become known overseas have certainly helped to inform people about what life is like there.

All worthwhile writing... comes from an individual vision, privately pursued.