Top 15 Peter Abrahams Quotes

It's because I creep up on people, I creep up on them while their backs are turned. Then suddenly without knowing how they realise, I'm there and they want what's there. Only they can't have it.

She's vain about her hair.

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.

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.

Found that the good things of this present are RESERVED FOR EUROPEANS ONLY

On a different mental and emotional level my friend Jonathan had gone through the same process. Christianity and the knowledge it brought had made the tribal past inadequate. So he had turned to the Christian present and future. These working men had found the tribal economy inadequate when the new taxes, the new offerings, and new prices of the white men came. So they had turned to city...

The concerts and theatres, the libraries and the parks, the bookshops and the clean, fresh looking tearooms, the buses and departmental stores.

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.

You write in English and already you are touching things that should not be mentioned.

In the name of civilization, the dignity and worth of the African people has been grossly underrated, their progress retarded and aspirations frustrated, and the whole life undermined. They are compelled to live in appalling conditions of squalor, filth and isolation...

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

That was the heart of it there, where it was almost as light as day. I could see cars and trams clearly. And the outlines of people moving. White people. To the left, and a little towards me, was Malay Camp, an inky black spot in the sea of light. Couldn't see anything there. Dark folk move in darkness: white folk move in light. Well, Malay Camp wouldn’t be a slum if it were as light as the city. Slum is darkness. Dark folk live in darkness.

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.

In that time I had been accused of theft, I had been called all the pet names of abuse reserved by whites for blacks; I had carried heavy loads to the tram stop, and women had conveniently forgotten to pay.

Really these streets and trees, almost the clean air I breathed here were: RESERVED FOR EUROPEANS ONLY. I was the intruder. And like the intruder, I walked carefully lest I be discovered. I longed for what the white folk had. I envied them their superior European lot