Athol Fugard Quotes

This is a strong-room of dreams. The dreamers? My people. The simple people, who you never find mentioned in the history books, who never get statutes erected to them, or monuments commemorating their great deeds. People who would be forgotten, and their dreams with them, if it wasn't for Styles. That's what I do, friends. Put down, in my way, on paper the dreams and hopes of my people so that even their children's children will remember a man.

Sizwe Bansi, in a manner of speaking, is dead!

I mean, how do I wash off yours and your father's filth?...I've also failed. A long time ago I promised myself I would do something, but you've just shown me...Master Harold...that I've failed.

All you've got to do is stand up and walk away from it.

I don't want to die.

Are you really worried about your children, friend, or are you just worried about yourself and your bloody name? Wake up, man! Use that bloody book and with your pay on Friday you'll have a real chance to do something for them.

Don’t talk crap, Hally! You don’t even know what the word ‘sympathy’ means.

Hally: Not many intellectuals are prepared to shovel manure with the peasants then go home and write a ‘little book’ called War and Peace. Incidentally, Sam, he was somebody else who, to quote, ‘…did not distinguish himself scholastically.

Life is just a plain bloody mess, that's all. And people are fools.

It was you who start me ballroom dancing.

Do you think Fathers do any more for their sons, except in terms of money, that Mothers do for their daughters.

I’m in the business of making people realize that their opinions aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.

Without me breathing down your neck all the time, you’d lean even more to the right than you do now.

There's nothing wrong with the world. It just goes around and around, and you gotta get on with your life.

I took a good look at my life. What did I see? A bloody circus monkey! Selling most of his time on earth to another man. Out of every twenty-four hours I could only properly call mine the six when I was sleeping. What the hell is the use of that?