“Written words still have the amazing power to bring out the best and worst of human nature”

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.

What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us what we are while there’s another force from inside battling to make us something else.

when it comes to their essential faculty as writers, all writers are androgynous beings.

Disaster is private, in its way, as love is.

It was a miracle; it was all a miracle: and one ought to have known, from the sufferings of saints, that miracles are horror.

Writers themselves don’t analyze what they do; to analyze would be to look down while crossing a canyon on a tightrope.

I decided that I wanted nothing to do with South African government television while any of my fellow writers were banned and couldn’t speak publicly.

Writing is always a voyage of discovery.

About the joys and the courage, I really don’t know what other people think. I just know that I’ve never left Africa. I’ve lived there all my life. And one of the wonderful things, in spite of all the terrible things that happen in South Africa, is the way people continue to keep their dignity.

Art defies defeat by its very existence, representing the celebration of life, in spite of all attempts to degrade and destroy it.

The country of the tourist pamphlet always is another country, an embarrassing abstraction of the desirable that, thank God, does not exist on this planet, where there are always ants and bad smells and empty Coca-Cola bottles to keep the grubby finger-print of reality upon the beautiful.

Comedy is an amazing calling. Once you get that first laugh, it’s hard to turn away.

We seem to be keeping old fans and are bringing on new fans that are teenagers. I think that is amazing.

The [book of the bible] Song Of Songs is an amazing erotic love poem that the church has tried very hard not to notice.

They do everything from gangsta rap to polka music and every genre in between. It’s amazing.

I work on my technique, but when I do a video, I want people to be amazed by the speed or the power. The casual fans don’t care if your hands are up or your hands are down.

I love drums and love how they look, so we offer re-wrapping to reboot your old kit, a hardware lacquering service – the black looks amazing, and bespoke snare drums.

Being on a show with a female lead is amazing for me. I love that. I love the powerful woman who’s complicated.

Before she knew it was candles, did she think she’d done it herself? With the amazing turns of her hips.