Marlene Van Niekerk Quotes & Sayings

And I will close my eyes and prepare myself so that they can unscrew my head and allow the map to slip into my lacunae. So that I can be filled and braced from the inside and fortified for the voyage. Because without my world inside me I will contract and congeal, more even than I am now, without speech and without actions and without any purchase upon time. — Marlene Van Niekerk

E all have to do things in this life that we don't like.. — Marlene Van Niekerk

First smile!! An unseasonal little shower of rain fell here, and a lot of butterflies drowned, so we put them in the sun and they came back to life, and flew up and then Agaat SMILED! — Marlene Van Niekerk

Well, I am something, Ma, you hissed, I am not nothing, I am somebody and I know what I want from life and I know what to do to get it. I will provide for myself. — Marlene Van Niekerk

Everything is important. To the smallest insect, even the mouldering tree, the deepest stone in the drift. — Marlene Van Niekerk

Read non-fiction. History, biology, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology. Get a bodyguard and do fieldwork. Find your inner fish. Don't publish too soon. Not before you have read Thomas Mann in any case. Learn by copying, sentence by sentence some of the masters. Copy Coetzee's or Sebald's sentences and see what happens to your story. Consider creative non-fiction if you want to stay in South Africa. It might be the way to go. Never neglect back and hamstring exercises, otherwise you won't be able to write your novel. One needs one's buttocks to think. — Marlene Van Niekerk

Nature is subtle and complex. — Marlene Van Niekerk

Marriage is holy and it's private. — Marlene Van Niekerk

Does a mirror preserve everything that has been reflected in it? Is there a record of light, thin membranes compressed layer upon layer that one has to ease apart with the finger-tips so that the colors don't dissipate, so that the moments don't blot and the hours don't run together into inconsequential splotches? So that a song of preserved years lies in your palm, a miniature of your life and times, with every detail meticulous in clear, chanting angel-fine enamel, as on the old manuscripts, at which you can peer through a magnifying glass and marvel at so much effort? So many tears for nothing? For light? For bygone moments? — Marlene Van Niekerk

Id i think i was god that i had to lie and take it did i think then i was a mountain or a hill or a ridge and who told me that and who decided stones had no rights for stones can waste away from being denied from being abused and who decided who is the ploughed and who ploughs and why did i not get up and why not go away and what would have happened if i had resisted.. — Marlene Van Niekerk

In a state of pseudo-death you restore your substance. — Marlene Van Niekerk

After all the years, after everything that you'd had to endure, after everything that you'd undertaken, however good or bad, long after you'd given up all hope, the reward. — Marlene Van Niekerk

A butterfly is like the soul of a person, it dries out in captivity. — Marlene Van Niekerk

Nobody can be so beautiful from the outside and so hollow from inside. Not even in a third-rate novel. — Marlene Van Niekerk