"Because he could not bear to let honour fly out of doors, he stopped it with his life. The son has proved the father Elesin, and there is nothing left in your mouth to gnash but infant gums."

"Music is an extremely big theme and an artistic discipline in its own right. It is, therefore, an intricate undertaking to cross-pollinate literature and music in a way that avoids navel-gazing and cliches. I think it does – and should – take some time to distill the personality and temperament of a musician in fiction, more so in character-driven narratives like Illumination"

"A farm is not beautiful unless it is productive. Reasonable productivity prevailed; he had to keep half an eye (all he could spare) on everything, all the time, to achieve even that much, and of course he had made it his business to pick up a working knowledge of husbandry, animal and crop, so that he couldn't easily be hoodwinked by his people there and could plan farming operations with some authority."

"White people. They are very powerful, my son. They are very clever. You will never come to the end of the things they can do."

"We don't want the eater of white left-overs at the feast their hands have prepared."

"I felt like running to the village, staying underneath the baobab tree, and crying"

"Look, just when did you become a social anthropologist, that's what I'd like to know” – Simon Pilkings,"

"I just wanted to live, without fear, without knowledge, to live on the instinct of which I was totally unaware, over which I had no control."

"This market is my roost. When I come among the women I am a chicken with a hundred mothers."

"Iyaloja, who is she? I saw her enter your stall; all daughters I know well."

"When they get this way there is nothing you can do. It's simply hammering against a brick wall."

"They looked different there—you should have seen the clothes in their cupboard. And the glasses—for visitors, when they drink wine. Here they haven’t got anything—just like us."

"You know this business has to be stopped, Simon. And you are the only man who can do it."

"Truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.."

"People give one another things that can't be gift wrapped."

"I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity."

"When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both. Some say that has now been achieved. But I know that that is not the case. The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning."

"It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness."

"I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, fopr with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended."

"But seeing Frank and his wife began to undermine my parochialism and loosen the hold of the tribalism that still imprisoned me. I began to sense my identity as an African, not just a Thembu or even a Xhosa.”"

"It was democracy in its purest form.""

"I was not born with a hunger to be free. I was born free — free in every way that I could know. Free to run in the fields near my mother's hut, free to swim in the clear stream that ran through my village, free to roast mealies under the stars and ride the broad backs of slow-moving bulls. As long as I obeyed my father and abided by the customs of my tribe, I was not troubled by the laws of man or God."

"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite."

"I write what i want!"

"The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid but he who conquers that fear."

"We have a responsibility not only to ourselves but also to the society from which we spring.”"

"“I always remember the regent’s axiom: a leader, he said, is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”"

"The blacks are tired of standing at the touchlines to witness a game that they should be playing. They want to do things for themselves and all by themselves.”"

"This was an all too typical South African story. It was not lack of ability that limited my people, but lack of opportunity.”"

"It was only when I began to learn that my boyhood freedom was an illusion, when I discovered as a young man that my freedom had already been taken from me, that I began to hunger for it. At first, as a student, I wanted freedom only for myself, the transitory freedoms of being able to stay out at night, read what I pleased, and go where I chose. Later, as a young man in Johannesburg, I yearned for the basic and honorable freedoms of achieving my potential, of earning my keep, of marrying and having a family — the freedom not to be obstructed in a lawful life."

"What Black Consciousness seeks to do is to produce real black people who do not regard themselves as appendages to white society. We do not need to apologise for this because it is true that the white systems have produced through the world a number of people who are not aware that they too are people."

"The white man has broken the tribe. And it is my belief - and again I ask your pardon - that it cannot be mended again. But the house that is broken, and the man that falls apart when the house is broken, these are the tragic things. That is why children break the law, and old white people are robbed and beaten."

"She has many husbands."

"One day in Johannesburg, and already the tribe was being rebuilt, the house and soul being restored."

"Cry the Beloved Country was another Uncle Tom's Cabin [1852]- in Africa. The failure in imaginative comprehension of the African character in European fiction lies in the fact that the African is not seen in an active causal-effect relationship with a significant past."

"There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling and they are lovely beyond any singing of it. The road climbs seven miles into them, to Carisbrooke; and from there, if there is no mist, you look down on one of the fairest valleys of Africa."

"They go to Johannesburg, and there they are lost, and no one hears of them at all."

"What we want is not black visibility but real black participation.”"

"Happy the eyes that can close."

"It was permissible to allow the destruction of a tribal system that impeded ... growth."

"We believe in the brotherhood of man, but ... do not want it in South Africa."

"The old man was tempted ... and the father's compassion struggled with ... temptation and overcame it."

"But when that dawn will come ... why, that is a secret."

"And he knew then that this was a man who put his feet upon a road."

"I would like to remind the black ministry, and indeed all black people, that God is not in the habit of coming down from heaven to solve people’s problems on earth."

"But then I slowly saw that not only was I not free, but my brothers and sisters were not free. I saw that it was not just my freedom that was curtailed, but the freedom of everyone who looked like I did. That is when I joined the African National Congress, and that is when the hunger for my own freedom became the greater hunger for the freedom of my people. It was this desire for the freedom of my people to live their lives with dignity and self-respect that animated my life, that transformed a frightened young man into a bold one, that drove a law-abiding attorney to become a criminal, that turned a family-loving husband into a man without a home, that forced a life-loving man to live like a monk. I am no more virtuous or self-sacrificing than the next man, but I found that I could not even enjoy the poor and limited freedoms I was allowed when I knew my people were not free. Freedom is indivisible; the chains on anyone of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me."

"My friend, your anxiety turned to fear ... sorrow may enrich."