The old phrases crack and meaning shakes out wet and new.

A desert is a place without expectation.

If you ask, 'What happens when we die? Why do we die?' you are asking, 'Why do we live?

Death is really the mystery of life, isn't it?

I am an African. I am white. I, in my humble way, and others in their much more brave way, have earned that right.

Responsibility is what awaits outside the Eden of Creativity

It's easier for the former masters to put aside the masks that hid their humanity than for the former slaves to recognise the faces underneath. Or to trust that this is not a new mask these are wearing.

...with an understanding of Shakespeare there comes a release from the gullibility that makes you prey to the great shopkeeper who runs the world, and would sell you cheap to illusion.

I don't cry. Unfortunately, I seem rather short of tears, so my sorrows have to stay inside me.

At four in the afternoon the old moon bleeds radiance into the grey sky.

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

The caged eagle become a metaphor for all forms of isolation, the ultimate in imprisonment. A zoo is prison.

Sincerity is never having an idea of oneself.

A truly living human being cannot remain neutral.

I cannot live with someone who can't live without me.

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.

Nothing factual that I write or say will be as truthful as my fiction.

Everyone ends up moving alone towards the self

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

My answer is: Recognize yourself in others

Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area.

The facts are always less than what really happened.

Books don't need batteries.

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.