Read non-fiction. History, biology, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology. Get a bodyguard and do fieldwork. Find your inner fish. Don't publish too soon. Not before you have read Thomas Mann in any case. Learn by copying, sentence by sentence some of the masters. Copy Coetzee's or Sebald's sentences and see what happens to your story. Consider creative non-fiction if you want to… — Marlene van Niekerk Copy Share
“Well, I am something, Ma, you hissed, I am not nothing, I am somebody and I know what I want from life and I… — Marlene Van Niekerk Copy Share Image
“...a butterfly is like the soul of a person, it dries out in captivity.” — Marlene Van Niekerk Copy Share Image
“First smile!! An unseasonal little shower of rain fell here, and a lot of butterflies drowned, so we put them in the sun and… — Marlene Van Niekerk Copy Share Image
“And I will close my eyes and prepare myself so that they can unscrew my head and allow the map to slip into my… — Marlene Van Niekerk Copy Share Image
“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… — Marlene Van Niekerk Copy Share Image
Nobody can be so beautiful from the outside and so hollow from inside. Not even in a third-rate novel. — Marlene van Niekerk Copy Share Image
“..did i think i was god that i had to lie and take it did i think then i was a mountain or a… — Marlene Van Niekerk Copy Share Image
