You Can't Be Afraid To

About The Joys And The Courage, I Really Don't Know What Other People Think. I Just Know That I've Never Left Africa. I've Lived There All My Life. And One Of The Wonderful Things, In Spite Of All The Terrible Things That Happen In South Africa, Is The Way People Continue To Keep Their Dignity.

I Couldn't Be Sufficiently Interested In Human Beings To Be A Writer If I Had Contempt For Human Beings.

September 2001. A Sunny Day In New York. Many Of Us Who Are Writers Were At Work On The Transformation Of Life Into A Poem, Story, A Chapter Of A Novel, When Terror Pounced From The Sky, And The World Made Witness To It.

I Believe - I Know (there Are Not Many Things I Should Care To Dogmatize About, On The Subject Of Writing) That Writers Need Solitude, And Seek Alienation Of A Kind Every Day Of Their Working Lives. (and Remember, They Are Not Even Aware When And When Not They Are Working.) ... The Tension Between Standing Apart And Being Fully Involved; That Is What Makes A Writer.

In Various And Different Circumstances Certain Objects And Individuals Are Going To Turn Out To Be Vital. The Wager Of Survival Cannot, By Its Nature, Reveal Which, In Advance Of Events.