Works of imagination should be written in very plain language the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

On what rests the hope of the republic? One country one language one flag!

But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense.

In the later books I am much more at home in the use of language to describe things. I had never thought of that until a critic pointed that out.

With fiction you can talk about plot character and narrative whereas a poem brings home the fact that everything that happens in a work of literature happens in terms of language. And this is daunting stuff to deal with.

Anybody who comes to the cinema is bringing they're whole sexual history their literary history their movie literacy their culture their language their religion whatever they've got. I can't possibly manipulate all of that nor do I want to.

We have our own history our own language our own culture. But our destiny is also tied up with the destinies of other people - history has made us all South Africans.

Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history.

History does not merely touch on language but takes place in it.

Science is the international language so when we are able to convince countries that good decision-making for human health and animal health is based upon science that's a real success story for us.