Communists are the last optimists.

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

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.

My answer is: Recognize yourself in others

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

The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.

And this indifference is still very much present in modern South Africa. Just listen to Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer - a representative of the British elite in this country: Afrikaner women are lower than rats, closer related to plants, just fit enough to be raped in an act of genus preservation.