6 Quotes & Sayings By Breyten Breytenbach

Born in 1948 in Cape Town, Breytenbach is one of the few writers to have won all three top South African literary awards: the Hertzog Literature Prize (1980), the Graham Greene Award (1986), and the Man Booker International Prize (2006). Breytenbach's first two novels—And the Heart Says Yes (1978) and Don Giovanni's Children (1982)—were described by The New York Times as "writing of exceptional beauty". His third novel, A Glass of Blessings (1993), was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. His fourth novel, The Final Verdict (2000), was awarded the prestigious Commonwealth Writers' Prize Read more

For his fifth novel, Deep Cut (2003), he received both the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Nelson Mandela-Bello Dlamini Prize for Emerging Writers. His sixth novel, The Lost Notebooks of Don Camillo (2007), was awarded France's Prix Femina Etranger. He lives in Cape Town with his wife and their two children.

Even ivory towers need central heating.
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Even ivory towers need central heating. Breyten Breytenbach
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History is a succession of things that ought never to have happened, and the writing act is a kind of revenge against this. Breyten Breytenbach
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The recognition and the acceptance of the Other's humanity (or humanness) is a maiming of self. You have to wound the self, cut it in strips, in order to -know- that you are as similar and of the same substance of shadows. Breyten Breytenbach
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Rhythm, repetition, making patterns--these are not only important devices for shaping the strange and abstract instrument/object we call a poem or a story, but they are craved as well because of our primordial need for reassurance, the sense of security we get from moving over the known. A mystery doesn't lose power in revisiting. Writing is not just to know, it is also to console. We need to be reminded that we are part of the obscure rhythm of birth and decade. It is the humming that matters. Breyten Breytenbach
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The goal, I submit, is obvious: subjugating the world (which is barbarian, dangerous, envious and ungrateful) to US power for the sake of America's interests. Breyten Breytenbach