If you die without agency as a child, but you have agency in your body [in the novel], how is it to be enacted unless it is being reimagined by a writer?

People seem very comfortable having a kind of Cheesecake Factory-type of life.

Whenever I went to an historical moment that was sad or where something terrible happened, it was, for me, a learning moment, a teaching moment for those who survived.

I usually feel something before I know it.

If you're just mired in privilege, there's nothing to learn; learning appears to be over.

Bruce Lee, before he fought, he would try to visualize how the fight would go, because he was visualizing a victorious path out of the combat.

Because I write intuitively and image-by-image and moment-by-moment, my writing has to be powered by feelings and emotions.

I can't stay engaged for years with a book unless it has feelings. It can't be an idea for me - it has to be a felt thing.

Much of the visualizing is imaginative.

People were always hungry, bullied, afraid, paranoid - so I just thought I'd show that in the novel in a kind of suffocating way.

Magical realism as a declaration in the text is usually when someone can't speak and then they must be magically reinvigorated in some way.

If you're going to walk out of the house in jeans and T-shirt, what can you do to make that interesting? Is it putting on a bright-colored pair of high-tops or a cool leather jacket?

Poetry is one of the oldest of all art forms, and one of its powers for shamans and tribal leaders was the mnemonic.

They looked at each other. They weren't thinking anymore. The time for that had come and gone. Smashed smiles lay ahead of them. But that would be later. Lay Ter.

I definitely don't want to play by myself. I don't relate to playing music that way. I like interacting with people.

Look to the Classics, History, to the Arts, for there is truth. Look away from the systems, the processes, the techniques.

Youth wrenches the sceptre from old age, and sets the crown on its own head before it is entitled to it.

Make good the good in you...and you will slowly steal into the Hawaiian heart, which is all of softness, and gentleness, and sweetness.

Those who vote for the ANC will be blessed on earth and heaven

The glory of my name increases my shame. Less known by mortals, I could better escape their eyes.

Be realistic: Go for the impossible!