To know nothing about yourself is to be constantly in danger of nothingness, those voids of non-being over which a man walks the tightrope of his life.

Love is the only energy I’ve ever used as a writer. I’ve never written out of anger, although anger has informed love.

You can't answer violence with counter violence ... The answer is love. The best sabotage is love.

As fascinated as I was by words on paper, it was matched by my fascination with words in people's mouths. The spoken word. And that is the world of theatre.

If the nature of human experience changes with the color of a man's skin, then the racists have been right all along.

For you in the West to hear the phrase 'All men are created equal' is to draw a yawn. For us, it's a miracle. We're starting out at rock bottom, man. But South Africa does have soul.

Without white South Africa realizing what it had done - and on the basis of that realization having the courage to ask for forgiveness - there can really be no significant movement.

We compound our suffering by victimizing each other.

Life is just a plain bloody mess, that's all. And people are fools.

Every boy needs a role model that he can be proud of and talk about to the other kids in the playground.

I've always sensed for myself an obligation to bear witness to my time.

The wind and the sea and the storm were his domain and I wanted nothing to do with them any longer. I just wanted Cain.

Don’t worry

Chefs are fond of hyperbole, so they can certainly talk that way. But on the whole, I think they probably have a more open mind than most people.

I have learned that peace is not the absence of trial, trouble, or torment but the presence of calm in the midst of them

Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.

He who fights with priests may make up his mind to have his poor good name torn and befouled by the most infamous lies and the most cutting slanders.

Jazz is an idea that is more powerful than the details of its history.

Saying hello to something new means saying good-bye to something old and loved.

The only thing that matters, at the end of a stay on earth, is how well did we love, what was the quality of our love?

In its broadest ecological context, economic development is the development of more intensive ways of exploiting the natural environment.