Quotes by Damon Galgut - Page 1

I'm not designed to interact with society.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Designed
Interact
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Generally, writers have very uninteresting lives.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Writers
Generally
Uninteresting
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Real obsession needs an unconscious motivation behind it.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Needs
Obsession
Unconscious
Behind
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I work by hand, with a fountain pen, in bound notebooks I buy in India.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Fountain
India
Bound
Fountain Pen
Notebooks
Pen
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I should confess that I'm woefully under-read in South African fiction.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
African
Confess
South African
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I wrote large chunks of 'The Impostor' and 'The Good Doctor' on a beach in Goa.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Beach
Chunks
Doctor
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Things happen once only and are never repeated, never return. Except in memory.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Happens
Memories
Return
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The only way you can be universal is to be sure you are very specifically local.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Locals
Universal
Way
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Yoga helps me with a composed and serene state of mind, which is good for writing.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Yoga
Serene
Good Mind Me
Composed
Helps
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'Arctic Summer,' as you might know, is the title of Forster's one unfinished novel.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Arctic
Unfinished
Title
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Something in a writer's brain needs to watch everything with a detached, amoral eye.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Brain
Detached
Eye
Needs
Writer
Amoral
Watch
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I'm constitutionally incapable of working on planes or trains, and airports are definitely out.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Incapable
Planes
Airport
Trains
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India I have visited a great many times, though there is a lot about it I will never understand.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Great Will Never
Visited
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Being gay myself, I'm naturally drawn to the interactions between men rather than men and women.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Men And Women
Men Women Myself
Naturally
Drawn
Women Men Myself
Interactions
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I go for long walks in Newlands Forest in Cape Town, and I go to the Turkish baths on Sunday mornings.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Baths
Sunday
Turkish
Walks
Cape
Forest
Mornings
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Unrequited affection is very painful for the lover, but it can have unexpected, creative consequences.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Affection
Creative
Painful
Unexpected
Unrequited
Consequences
Lover
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South Africa is highly politicised; even small issues become politicised, and it becomes quite bitter.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Bitter
South Africa
Africa
Becomes
Highly
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For the first five years of my life, things felt pretty good. A lot went wrong after that, family-wise.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Life Good My Life
Pretty Good
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While apartheid was in operation, the set-up was a gift for writers if you were looking for a big theme.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Apartheid
Operation
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Literature at its fullest takes human nature as its theme. That's the kind of writing that interests me.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Human Nature
Theme
Fullest
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It's been unsettling to discover that every form of narrative, even one that purports to tell the truth, is a kind of lying.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Lying
Narrative
Truth Is
Discover
Unsettling
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I like to believe that if you pay close attention to the sentences as they unfold, they will draw you in rather than pushing you away.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Pushing
Sentences
Close Attention
Unfold
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Stationery gets me excited because it has an individual character, unlike computers, which may be convenient but are generic and bland.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Computers
Bland
Convenient
Generic
Unlike
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I've been wanting to write a book about what goes into creating a novel, and the story behind 'A Passage to India' is especially interesting.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Passage
Wanting
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Traveling is one of few zones of experience where you are not directly plugged into the world around you. You're not part of the society you're passing through.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Passing
Zone
Directly
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I long for a South African society that's free of ideological forces - no society can ever really be free of ideological forces - but I wish it was free of power.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Ideological
African
Forces
South African
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Any radical change or trauma always makes for interesting subject matter, but then all stories deal, to some extent, with the disjuncture between past and present.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Radical
Radical Change
Subject Matter
Trauma
Extent
Present
Subject
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I first went to India because of my interest in yoga, hoping to go to the Iyengar Centre in Pune for a while. That didn't work out, but I ended up on a beach in Goa, writing.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Beach
Centre
Work Out
Work Go Because
Ended
Hoping
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Perhaps cliche is nothing more than the weight of the past pinning down your mind. In this sense, imaginative freedom is a way of finding the future, though it isn't so easy to do.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Imaginative
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Almost overnight, white people have gone from being very powerful to potentially irrelevant. Their future in South Africa is not what many had envisaged, so it involves a lot of reinvention.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Irrelevant
Reinvention
South Africa
Africa
Envisaged
Involves
Overnight
Potentially
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Rian Malan was one of the first younger writers to perceive and write about a darkness in the South African psyche that goes deeper than mere politics. To some extent, that's my territory, too.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Deeper
Mere
Perceive
Territory
African
Extent
Psyche
South African
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Writing is not like acting, where you can pull these little stunts that create a particular effect. Words are all it is about, and the way you use words has to be individual and particular to you.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Pull
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Most writers battle with periods of being blocked; it's almost an occupational hazard. But in the writing of his last and greatest novel, 'A Passage to India,' E. M. Forster got stuck for nine years.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Battle
Blocked
Nine
Periods
Stuck
Hazard
Occupational
Passage
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I try to get going early, on the assumption that the way you begin your day is the way you continue. But certain books only want to be written at night, so there's no hard rule where work is concerned.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Assumption
Work Your Day
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Poetry was syllable and rhythm. Poetry was the measurement of breath. Poetry was time make audible. Poetry evoked the present moment; poetry was the antidote to history. Poetry was language free from habit.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Language
Measurement
Moments
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I'm fascinated by how much has changed from one generation to another. There are young people growing up now for whom apartheid is just a distant memory and the idea of military service is an abstract notion.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Abstract
Apartheid
Fascinated
Military Service
Notion
Distant
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A journey is a gesture inscribed in space, it vanishes even as it's made. You go from one place to another place, and on to somewhere else again, and already behind you there is no trace that you were ever there.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Journey
Space
Gestures
Somewhere Else
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In his clearest moments he thinks he has lost the ability to love, people or places or things, most of all the person and place and thing that he is. Without love nothing has value, nothing can be made to matter very much.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Matter
People
Thinking
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Being gay immediately placed me outside the values of the society I was growing up in. Apartheid was a very patriarchal system, so its assumptions seemed foreign to me from the outset. I've always had the advantage of alienation.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Advantage
Alienation
Apartheid
Society Always Me
Assumptions
Immediately
Outset
Patriarchal
Placed
Seemed
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If I had done this, if I had said that, in the end you are always more tormented by what you didn't do than what you did, actions already performed can always be rationalized in time, the neglected deed might have changed the world.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Deeds
Done
World
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I think the impulse took shape in early childhood when I was very ill with lymphoma for a number of years. I spent a lot of time in hospitals and sick-rooms, being read to by various relatives, and I learned to associate books with love and attention.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Childhood
Early Childhood
Hospitals
Ill
Impulse
Associate
Relatives
Shape
Spent
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It's expected of novels that they should explain the world and create the illusion that things are ultimately logical and coherent. But that's not what I see around me. Often, events remain mysterious and unresolved, and our emotions reach no catharsis.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Catharsis
Logical
Mysterious
Coherent
Create
Emotions
Explain
Reach
Remain
Ultimately
Unresolved
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One of the questions writers bump up against in their work, whether they know it or not, is about lying. Because fiction is a form of deceit, and one's abilities are measured by how convincingly one can persuade readers that these events really happened.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Deceit
Lying
Bump
Measured
Persuade
Readers
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Writing is very good for household tasks. Because you'd rather fix a dripping tap or paint an old wall - you'd rather do almost anything than sit and write. I have to reach a point of obsession in order to write, and so I find starting a book incredibly difficult.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Dripping
Household
Obsession
Paint
Almost Anything
Good Difficult Find
Tap
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There's no theme, no moral to be learned, except for the knowledge that lightning can strike from a clear blue sky one morning and take away everything you've built, everything you've counted on, leaving wreckage and no meaning behind. It can happen to anyone, it can happen to you.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Morning
Blue
Sky
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I think there's something very dark in the South African psyche. I think we live a lot of the time in a state of a very low-grade civil war; the levels of violence in South Africa are extremely high. In a way, the civil war that never happened is being played out in a covert way, so we live with a lot of very ugly things.
Damon Galgut / Playwright
Civil War
Covert
Levels
South Africa
African
Psyche
South African
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Damon Galgut Quotes - Page 1

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