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.

Fiction is a way of exploring possibilities present but undreamt of in the living of a single life.

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

Art defies defeat by its very existence, representing the celebration of life, in spite of all attempts to degrade and destroy it.

There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.

I don't understand writers who feel they shouldn't have to do any of the ordinary things of life, because I think that this is necessary: one has to keep in touch with that... The ordinary action of taking a dress down to the dry cleaner's or spraying some plants infected with greenfly is a very sane and good thing to do. It brings one back, so to speak. It also brings the world back.

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.