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.

Music has no limits of a life-span.

There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.

In various and different circumstances certain objects and individuals are going to turn out to be vital. The wager of survival cannot, by its nature, reveal which, in advance of events.

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

You can't change a regime on the basis of compassion. There's got to be something harder.

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.