4 Quotes by Achmat Dangor

He stands on the stone table and selects a large fig, bites into the skin, then opens it with his fingers. He thinks of a woman's sex, ancient and eternal, no young girl would have such gritty sweetness. Was this not perhaps the fruit that got Adam and Eve thrown out of Eden? Who would want to give up an unblemished state of immortality for the insipid apple?

Perhaps history had dwindled away. Their lives, Lydia’s and Silas’s, the whole country’s, had become ordinary things. Not worth recording any longer, not worth the few precious moments of her busy day.

It struck me that our history is contained in the home we live in, that we are shaped by the ability of these simple structures to resist being defiled

I remember my emotions the day we watched Nelson Mandela walk out of prison Writing & literature in South Africa during the anti-apartheid years, became a 'cultural weapon.' You had to use it to fight apartheid & some of us resisted that in the end, you recognize that you are facing a government that has no scruples about using culture & art to oppress you.