“Success sometimes may be defined as a disaster put on hold. Qualified. Has to be.”

Well, you know, in the fundamentalist milieu of the Afrikaners, there was a sense that they were a chosen people, that they were bringing civilization to the blacks.

I’m forty-nine but I could be twenty-five except for my face and my legs.

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

Communists are the last optimists.

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

Rebirth. I mean by this simply what happens when the child begins to realise the fact that the black does not enter through the white’s front door is not in the same category as the fact that the dead will never come back.

September 2001. A sunny day in New York. Many of us who are writers were at work on the transformation of life into a poem, story, a chapter of a novel, when terror pounced from the sky, and the world made witness to it.

it’s impossible to conquer all fear and loss by preparation. There are always sources of desolation that aren’t taken into account because no one knows what they will be.

The facts are always less than what really happened.

The truth isn’t always beauty, but the hunger for it is.

It’s absolutely fatal to your writing to think about how your work will be received. It’s a betrayal of whatever talent you have.

A desert is a place without expectation.

I’m a candle flame that sways in currents of air you can’t see. You need to be the one who steadies me to burn.

I have learned since that sometimes the things we want most are impossible for us. You may long to come home, yet wander forever.

Nothing fades so quickly as what is unchanged.

The Communist Party is very popular in South Africa, especially among the young people. Never having had a chance to travel, and having suffered so much under capitalism, they still can’t believe that the Russian people themselves have rejected it.

Just hold on. Just for a minute.” “Are you all right ?” I found my gaze dropping towards his chair, afraid some part of him was pinched, or trapped, that I had got something wrong.

I cannot hold with those who wish to put down the insignificant chatter of the world.

I have a painting where somebody’s holding a chicken, and underneath the chicken is somebody’s head.

No matter how bad a state of mind you may get into, if you keep strong and hold out, eventually the floating clouds must vanish and the withering wind must cease.

Stay with me tonight. Let me hold you even if that’s all it is. Let me keep you safe.

Brazil is a country I hold very dearly. I’ve got followers there who I’ve been interacting with for years, as well as fellow artists like Ivete Sangalo, and it also has huge figures like Pele.

I think a man needs to be a man. To hold a woman the way she wants to be held. Just do whatever your woman wants, and you’ll be fine.

The other damned saw what was happening and caught hold of it too. She was indignant and cried, “Let go-it’s my onion,” and as soon as she said, “my onion,” the stalk broke and she fell back into the flames.