“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.”

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

Sincerity is never having an idea of oneself.

Writing is making sense of life.

Literature is one of the few areas left where black and white feel some identity of purpose; we all struggle under censorship.

Perhaps the best way to write is to do so as if one were already dead, afraid of no one’s reactions, answerable to no one’s views.

Responsibility is what awaits outside the Eden of Creativity.

The function of a writer is to make sense of life. It is such a mystery, it changes all the time, like the light.

A truly living human being cannot remain neutral.

Very often we support change, and then are swept away by the change. I think that…you just make your own response to your own generation. A response adequate to your time.

Learning to write sent me falling, falling through the surface of the South African way of life.

Time is change; we measure its passage by how much things alter.

Sentiment is for those who don’t know what to do next.

Fiction is a way of exploring possibilities present but undreamt of in the living of a single life.

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.

Your whole life you are really writing one book, which is an attempt to grasp the consciousness of your time and place– a single book written from different stages of your ability.

Censorship may have to do with literature; but literature has nothing whatever to do with censorship.

Not all women are going to get married, be monogamous and raise a family. It will destroy the current social structure based on a sexual double standard that we’re currently living under.

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books.

Liverpool are currently halfway through an unbeaten twelve-match run

Today, at Harvard, any student with the currently fashionable color of skin is given rights denied to students of the currently unfashionable color.

Currently I’m working with Parker Fly on a new Midi guitar to arrive next year.

I have been writing. Even when I intend not to write, I find myself writing. I’m currently in a place where I should be putting together the fifth book, but then more poems are coming. It’s exciting and somewhat daunting.

You know how we are when a new book of poems is at last coming together – all frenzy, distraction, and bounty? It’s as if I’ve turned into summer itself.