Mohale Mashigo

"I do like this idea of time. For me there is no before or after. It’s all during. It’s just a bunch of “durings.” I don’t think of myself as someone in the past, I’m a person going through something. I do like to see how these “durings” influence the future."

"Koko and I somehow had the ability to walk alongside our hurt and disappointment; we never let it get ahead of us or lead us astray.’"

"How could he possibly describe anything when the world around him had lost its colour"

"I birthed myself; it was bloody and painful but now I’m standing on the roof of a city as something new."

"The city is like that: it loves new and shiny things; which also leads it to be a graveyard of previously beautiful relics."

"Things that lurk in the shadows do not like the light. People get used to one tiny light and begin to seek out more of it in the world and in themselves – that’s how the light liberates us."

"Being liked is not nearly as great as being happy with the decisions I make. I'm not money, so I know not everyone likes me"

"It’s fantasy when white people write it. When black and brown people write it, it’s magic realism"

"It seems as if the whole country is falling apart, so why be a good person, why be good to yourself, when the country is not being good to you, it’s not giving you the opportunities you need"

"It’s always the youth that are making the sacrifices. When I think about the Soweto riots in 1976 in South Africa, it wasn’t people that stopped working and said, we are going to fight against these policies, it was the school children"

"I write for myself and then I edit for the reader, to make things easier for them, to refine the ideas"

"I try as a reader to put myself in places I’ve never been to, in the shoes of people I would never meet"

"I don’t think all women need to birth themselves"

"I definitely feel the world lacks a sense of humour"