Perhaps the best way to write is to do so as if one were already dead, afraid of no one's reactions, answerable to no one's views.

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.

A truly living human being cannot remain neutral.

In a country like South Africa, writers have nuisance value, because those of us who have become known overseas have certainly helped to inform people about what life is like there.

Written words still have the amazing power to bring out the best and worst of human nature

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.

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.