It's absolutely fatal to your writing to think about how your work will be received. It's a betrayal of whatever talent you have.

Once you have some sort of reputation in the outside world, they will try to woo you. They will say, "Won't you come and be on a talk program about books? That's not political." Then they can say to the outside world, "See how free it is, she appears on television. See how free it is." So I refused to have anything of mine read or dramatized on South African television.

Nothing fades so quickly as what is unchanged.

What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us what we are while there's another force from inside battling to make us something else.

There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.

When I was a child, we seemed to be living in a world remote from the rest of the world. But television has made a great difference to all of us.

The caged eagle become a metaphor for all forms of isolation, the ultimate in imprisonment. A zoo is prison.