Janet Suzman

"Any government would be really embarrassed to ban Shakespeare."

"The apartheid government was frightened of ridicule. Everyone is frightened of laughter."

"Theatre is a white invention, a European invention, and white people go to it. It's in their DNA. It starts with Shakespeare."

"Life and art get mixed up sometimes – it's what actors draw on."

"My sensitivity to prejudice is high because I was brought up in South Africa. My awareness of all this crap came earlier, and it's stayed with me, and it's why I'm militantly liberal."

"I remember being absolutely shocked in Australia at the absence of black people."

"The only times I saw black people were once in Adelaide and once at the other end of the continent, in both cases looking desperate on the street, sitting in huddles drinking beer. I realised what Australians had done to their indigenous population, to their other: they'd disappeared them."

"In South Africa we were criminal, beastly, vile and disgusting, but we didn't commit genocide."

"You can't envy something you can't be, can you? You sat and admired what was emerging."

"The whole purpose of an actor's life is to find great writing, and when it comes along you leap on it like a puppy on a slipper. You're avid – greedy – hungry – for great gobbets of good writing. That's all we live for."

"I stepped back from acting because I was bringing up a child. You can't do both."

"It's exactly at the moment that they want you most – at the end of the day when it's bathtime, storytime, bedtime – that's when you're walking out the door. I couldn't bear that brave little look as he said, 'Goodbye'. So I thought Josh is more important than a play."

"Nature has a way of dealing with your brain when you have a child – it turns it to porridge."

"You realise retrospectively mother nature has made you absolutely focused and cow-like. Then you realise your child is infinitely cleverer than you will ever be, and wittier and funnier, and you like being in its company and so you think, 'I haven't done a bad job, really."