66 Quotes by Athol Fugard

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

I think all of my writing life led up to the writing of ‘The Train Driver’ because it deals with my own inherited blindness and guilt and all of what being a white South African in South Africa during those apartheid years meant.

Night-time is when I brainstorm; last thing, when the family’s asleep and I’m alone, I think about the next day’s writing and plan a strategy for my assault on the blank page.

From early on there were two things that filled my life – music and storytelling, both of them provoked by my father. He was a jazz pianist and also a very good storyteller, an avid reader. He passed both those interests on to me.

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.

The clocks are ticking my friends. History has got a strict timetable. If we’re not careful we might be remembered as the country who arrived to late.

I’m always in disguise in one form or another in my plays.

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.