Breyten Breytenbach Quotes

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

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

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

Even ivory towers need central heating.

Breyten Breytenbach