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

- Marlene Van Niekerk

Marriage is holy and it's private.

- Marlene Van Niekerk

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

- Marlene Van Niekerk

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

- Marlene Van Niekerk

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

- Marlene Van Niekerk

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

- Marlene Van Niekerk

Read non-fiction. History, biology, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology. Get a bodyguard and do fieldwork. Find your inner fish. Don't publish too s…

- Marlene Van Niekerk