Nothing fades so quickly as what is unchanged.

About the joys and the courage, I really don't know what other people think. I just know that I've never left Africa. I've lived there all my life. And one of the wonderful things, in spite of all the terrible things that happen in South Africa, is the way people continue to keep their dignity.

What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us what we are while there's another force from inside battling to make us something else.

Mumbling obeisance to abhorrence of apartheid is like those lapsed believers who cross themselves when entering a church.

There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.

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.

In a certain sense a writer is 'selected' by his subject - his subject being the consciousness of his own era.