Quotes by Athol Fugard

“We compound our suffering by victimizing each other.”

Love is the only energy I’ve ever used as a writer. I’ve never written out of anger, although anger has informed love.

Yes! Thats what all our talk about a decent world has been... just so much bullshit.We did say it was still only a dream.And a bloody useless one at that. Lifes a fuck-up and its never going to change.

Anybody who thinks theres nothing wrong with this world needs to have his head examined. Just when things are going all right, without fail someone or something will come along and spoil everything. Somebody should write that down as a fundamental law of the Universe. The principle of perpetual disappointment. If there is a God who created this world, he should scrap it and try again.

Be careful, Hally.Of what? The truth? I seem to be the only one around here who is prepared to face it.

Those are big collisions, Hally. They make for a lot of bruises. People get hurt in all that bumping, and were sick and tired of it now. Its been going on for too long. Are we never going to get it right?...Learn to dance life like champions instead of always being just a bunch of beginners at it?

Its just that life felt the right size in there... not too big and not too small. Wasnt so hard to work up a bit of courage. Its got so bloody complicated since then.

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.

There are times in my 30 years in the theater that I have come perilously close to losing faith in the one form of action I have in this life.

You cant legislate into existence an act of forgiveness and a true confession; those are mysteries of the human heart, and they occur between one individual and another individual, not a panel of judges sitting asking questions, trying to test your truth.

Nobody can take what I love away from me. I would like to believe that love is the only energy Ive ever used as a writer. Ive never written out of anger, although anger has informed love.

Night-time is when I brainstorm; last thing, when the familys asleep and Im alone, I think about the next days writing and plan a strategy for my assault on the blank page.