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.

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

You can't be afraid to do good in case evil results.

If you live in Europe . . . things change . . . but continuity never seems to break. You don't have to throw the past away.

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.

When I was a child, we seemed to be living in a world remote from the rest of the world. But television has made a great difference to all of us. If something happens where I live, you see it tomorrow or perhaps even at the same time it is happening there. It's not "one world" in the sense that conflicts are resolved in the world. But we are more one world in that we know what is going on and are psychologically influenced by what goes on around us.

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