As writers, we are exploring the mystery, the mystery of existence.

I'm a candle flame that sways in currents of air you can't see. You need to be the one who steadies me to burn.

I decided that I wanted nothing to do with South African government television while any of my fellow writers were banned and couldn't speak publicly.

September 2001. A sunny day in New York. Many of us who are writers were at work on the transformation of life into a poem, story, a chapter of a novel, when terror pounced from the sky, and the world made witness to it.

It's easier for the former masters to put aside the masks that hid their humanity than for the former slaves to recognise the faces underneath. Or to trust that this is not a new mask these are wearing.

Keenness of hearing revives when one is alone.

There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.