Quotes from Marlene van Niekerk

We all have to do things in this life that we don't like.

a butterfly is like the soul of a person, it dries out in captivity.

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!

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

Nature is subtle and complex.

In a state of pseudo-death you restore your substance.

ons is daar om aan te roep, het u altyd gesê, om op te roep, te voorskyn te roep.

did 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..

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.

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.

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.

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

Marriage is holy and it's private.

we all have to do things in this life that we don't like..