Nothing fades so quickly as what is unchanged.

Can you imagine writers influencing things in America? Can you imagine a writer in England influencing? Absolutely not. And in France? It used to be, but no more - absolutely not. France used to, at least, have writers as diplomats, but not any more.

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.

The caged eagle become a metaphor for all forms of isolation, the ultimate in imprisonment. A zoo is prison.

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

I don't think I am a citizen of the world; I am very much a citizen of my own country. But my own country is closely related to other parts of the world and influenced by what happens there.

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.