55 Quotes by Peter Abrahams

I attended school regularly for three years. I learned to read and write. 'Lamb's Tales' from Shakespeare was my favourite reading matter. I stole, by finding, Palgrave's 'Golden Treasury.' These two books, and the 'Everyman' edition of John Keats, were my proudest and dearest possessions, my greatest wealth.

My mother was a member of the Cape Coloured community. 'Coloured' is the South African word for the half-caste community that was a by-product of the early contact between black and white.

With Shakespeare and poetry, a new world was born. New dreams, new desires, a self consciousness was born. I desired to know to know myself in terms of the new standards set by these books.

The familiar mood that awaits the sensitive young who are poor and dispossessed is a mood of sharp and painful inferiority, of violently angry tensions, of desperate and overwhelming longings.

Joseph and his mother come from the black kings who were before the white man.

All my life had been dominated by a sign, often invisible but no less real for that, which said: 'Reserved for Europeans Only.'

My mother went to work in the homes of white folk, usually living in and looking after their children. The money was small.

Perhaps life had a meaning that transcended race and colour. If it had, I could not find it in South Africa.

Positive social awareness among the South African educated half-caste is zero. Teaching is a mechanical job. The best way of earning a living.