When I say war, I'm not talking about mental war; I'm talking about totally eliminating the obstacles to transformation of our children.

I know there are writers who get up every morning and sit by their typewriter or word processor or pad of paper and wait to write. I don't function that way. I go through a long period of gestation before I'm even ready to write.

But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That's all.

I never hesitated, as a student, in embracing the necessity of violence. In South Africa, I didn't just accept it; I looked forward to it as a mission.

Writers throughout the ages have one weapon, which is literature, but they also have their responsibilities as a citizen when literature does not seem to suffice. I mean, they are not mutually exclusive. One continues to write anyway but if you are called out to demonstrate, if people are being killed in the streets, it's hardly the moment to go for your pen and paper, you know, help in one way or the other.

Some of us – poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes – beyond the word.

When I say war, I'm not talking about mental war; I'm talking about totally eliminating the obstacles to transformation of our children.