The facts are always less than what really happened.

It was a miracle; it was all a miracle: and one ought to have known, from the sufferings of saints, that miracles are horror.

If you look at the recent Nobel Prize winners, one couldn't say that the work didn't matter and the political commitment did. Who had ever heard of the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz? He is not politically involved. Octavio Paz is a great poet, also not politically involved. The Nobel Prize is for literature, for the quality of work over the years.

The function of a writer is to make sense of life. It is such a mystery, it changes all the time, like the light.

Nothing fades so quickly as what is unchanged.

Disaster is private, in its way, as love is.

The Communist Party is very popular in South Africa, especially among the young people. Never having had a chance to travel, and having suffered so much under capitalism, they still can't believe that the Russian people themselves have rejected it.