The primacy of the word, basis of the human psyche, that has in our age been used for mind-bending persuasion and brain-washing pulp, disgraced by Gobbles and debased by advertising copy, remains a force for freedom that flies out between all bars.

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.

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

A child understands fear, and the hurt and hate it brings.

If one will always have to feel white first, and African second, it would be better not to stay on in Africa

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.

The solitude of writing is also quite frightening. It's quite close to madness, one just disappears for a day and loses touch.