n writer
and political activist. She was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature
when she was recognised as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel
– been of very great benefit to humanity".
Her writing has long dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress
during the days when the organization was banned.
The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.
The gap between the committed and the indifferent is a Sahara whose faint trails, followed by the mind's eye only, fade out in sand.
I opened the telegram and said, "He's dead —" and as I looked up into Graham Mill's gaze I saw that he knew who, before I could say.
Among the group of people waiting at the fortress was a schoolgirl in a brown and yellow uniform holding a green eiderdown quilt and, by the loop at its neck, a red hot-water bottle.
Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area.
Responsibility is what awaits outside the Eden of Creativity.
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.
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.
You can't change a regime on the basis of compassion. There's got to be something harder.