Peter Abrahams Quotes

I pushed my nose and lip...I was inside the raindrop away from the misery of the cold damp room. I was in a place of warmth and sunshine, inside my raindrop world.

Leah left him and he collapsed in a heap. She looked down and spat. The she raised her heel and brought it down on his face.

A strange group of people, these, he thought. Nothing tied them down. They seem to believe in nothing. But well, they had given him a bed. She had given it to him. She who was the strangest of them all.

Entering is stepping into a new Dark Age. The sea had once been here. In its retreat it had left a white, unyielding sand, grown dirty with time. It had left almost a desert.

All the years of his life had been spent walking through the land; from east to west, then back; from north to south, then back.

Oh––isn’t it lovely? That’s the one I want when we are rich!’ Her eyes were bright, her lips parted

Who had given him the scholarship? The Bantu Welfare Trust? No one I asked seemed sure. I put out feelers. The Welfare Trust was only for pure-blooded Africans. And though the Africans might accept me as one of themselves, the whites who administered the trust would not. Those to whom I spoke thought it crazy, but there you are.

I turned and looked at the city. A sea of twinkling, multi-colored lights leaped to the eye. They threw up the outlines of buildings. They made the wide streets shine. They spelled out advertisements. I could map the city by its lights.

He (Roderiques) was hungry and homeless. So I fed him. He told me something had gone wrong and he had to leave the Roman school. He said he had no people.

I am no good and I cannot help myself. It will be right if you hate me. You should beat me. But inside me there is something wrong. And it is because I want the things of the white people. I want to be like the white people and go where they go and do the things they do and I am black. I cannot help it.

So many people who consider themselves progressives have their own weird notions about the native, but they all have one thing in common. They want to decide who the good native is and they want to do good things for him. [...] They want to think for him and he must accept their thoughts. And they like him to depend on them.

The only place where he was completely free was underground in the mines. There he was a master and knew his way. There he did not even fear his white man, for his white man depended on him. He was the boss boy. He gave the orders to the other mine boys. They would do for him what they would not do for his white man or any other white man.

Out of your feeling and out of your pain it must come. Others have found it. You can too. But first you must think and not be afraid of your thoughts. And if you have questions and you look around you will find those who will answer them. But first you must know what you are going to fight and why and what you want.

The natives did not like locations, and besides, they were all full, so the white man had started townships in the outlying district of Johannesburg in the hope of killing Vrededorp and Malay Camp.

He's just a mine boy ... Yes. Grand, but not a human being yet. Just a mine boy.