22 Quotes by Jacques Pauw

I don’t remember everything that was happening around me at the time, but gangster life was intoxicating and irresistible. It’s difficult to describe the feeling. It’s that jungle culture, the lion syndrome, the Tarzan tag; the invincibility, the lure of living on the edge; having not just one woman but a whole brothel on your tail; the shooting irons, the fast cars and the endless supply of cocaine.

That’s the biggest danger of incarceration: you get used to it. It’s not the goon in the bathroom with a blade hidden in his mouth creeping up behind you that poses the biggest threat to your survival. It’s the fact that you get used to it.

If there was ever a capitalist finger up Lenin's waxy ass, it was the opening of the ultra-luxurious GUM store on the eastern border of the square, just a stone's throw from the mausoleum.

I'm not a journalist any longer,” I told him. “I'm a chef!

What I have revealed is an orgy of depravity and venality, and if there is any attempt to stop the publishing of this book, it will be because they do not want you to know about it.

Only after Zuma has looked after himself comes the small little problem of governing the Republic and its millions and millions of hungry, uneducated and jobless voters who are looking to him for salvation and deliverance.

There is no dispute: Jacob Zuma has ripped the society and state to shreds. He swore at his inauguration to be faithful to our country and that he would observe, uphold and maintain our beautiful Constitution. It was all bullshit.

Whether you have to get to the top of the Kremlin or clamber up Jacob Zuma's slithery and gangrenous pole, politics is a messy business.

It is much quicker to fly from Johannesburg to Lagos than from Moscow to Vladivostok. I couldn't help thinking: can you imagine Jacob Zuma also ruling Nigeria, 4,600 kilometres to the north-west? The chaos and madness!