"Well, you know, in the fundamentalist milieu of the Afrikaners, there was a sense that they were a chosen people, that they were bringing civilization to the blacks."

"Mostly I'm interviewed by white people, and identified with white society."

"I shall never write an autobiography, I'm much too jealous of my privacy for that."

"You can't change a regime on the basis of compassion. There's got to be something harder."

"What is shameful cannot be shared. What is shameful, separates."

"Everyone wears the uniform of how he sees himself or how he disguises himself."

"In every encounter between human beings there is a pace set that belongs to them, and that will be taken up in its own rhythm whenever they are together."

"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever."

"The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Sociology extracts it. The writer loses Eden, writes to be read and comes to realize that he is answerable."

"'Even the cat buries its dirt; I carry mine around with me.' She thought of saying it aloud many times in the weeks after she came home from the hospital."

"There was no mistaking her. She was a young woman whose cultivated gentleness of expression and shabby homespun style of dress, in the context in which she was encountered, suggested not transcendental meditation centre or environmental concern group or design studio, but a sign of identification with the humanity of those who had nothing and risked themselves."

"Responsibility is what awaits outside the Eden of Creativity."

"I think that as long as those of us in South Africa who are articulate are asked to go abroad, and we know we are going to be interviewed, we cannot refuse. There are so many people in South Africa, within the country, who are muzzled. And there are others who may not be muzzled within South Africa but whose passports are withdrawn, people like Bishop Desmond Tutu-a very important voice; you know, a writer is nothing compared with him. He is a big figure, a real leader, and he can't go abroad and speak. So I think that those of us who can, as long as we can, we have to use the opportunity."

"In countries like Czechoslovakia, like South Africa, like Argentina, guilt by association is a fact and therefore the friendships you form can be a political act. This circumstance, way of life, is very complex. People think that a political act is signing a declaration or planting a bomb, but there are all kinds of political acts in countries where there is a great political struggle going on."

"Novelists and short-story writers provide implicitly a critique of their society…A good writer can't help revealing the truth that is in his society and by that token there is a political implication and he is politically committed. (1983)"

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

"I think that the decision to be sincere is an artistic one."

"I like the idea of a literary patchwork, novel by novel, poem by poem, by different writers, mapping out an era, 'a continent' more and more thoroughly. No one writer can do it. (1979)"