Peter Abrahams

“To have the ability to destroy all and not to do it was one of the hard tests humanity passed - but only just - in the middle of the twentieth century.”

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

“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.”

“Many have changed so much that they have lost the magic of the dream that carried them on their own bootstraps.”

“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.”

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

“Tribal man is not an individual in the western sense. Psychologically and emotionally, he is the present living personification of a number of forces, among the most important of which are the ancestral dead.”

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

“In the Caribbean islands, especially in Jamaica, have I found a country similar to South Africa plus the racial freedom I had sought so long.”