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

From Ernest Hemingway's stories I learned to listen within my stories for what went unsaid by my characters.

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.

Where do whites fit in the New Africa? Nowhere, I'm inclined to sayand I do believe that it is true that even the gentlest and most westernised Africans would like the emotional idea of the continent entirely without the complication of the presence of the white man for a generation or two. But nowhere, as an answer for us whites, is in the same category as remarks like What's the use of living? in the face of the threat of atomic radiation. We are living; we are in Africa.

Any writer of any worth at all hopes to play only a pocket-torch of light - and rarely, through genius, a sudden flambeau - into the bloody yet beautiful labyrinth of human experience, of being.

The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Ideology demands it. Society exacts it.

I never talk about what I'm writing about currently, never. It's private work on your own, no need or obligation to talk about it. Writers are made into performers these days, including myself, but there are some instances in which I will not perform.