The belief that we can be done with our past is a myth.

In the West, it was believed that attitude and ambition saved you. In Africa, we had learned that no one was immune to capricious tragedy.

I remember Karoi as a very hot, flat place, but in reality, it is all hills. We just lived next to an airstrip - the only flat piece of land around. That was my world as a three-year-old and sums up the indelible power of memory to a young child.

In southern and central Africa, tragedy roared at us, and we roared back. We shared dramas publicly, bled them on the corridors of hospitals, laid our corpses on the beds of neighbors, held our sorrows up in full light. We were volume ten about our madness and disorder, even if we were also resilient and enduring and tough.

I'm very manipulative towards directors. My theory is that everyone on the set is directing the film, we're all receiving art messages from the universe on how we should do the film.

I think imagination can be an incredibly powerful tool and it can help you get more confidence.

The nature of creativity is to make space for things to happen... We can drive it out with our busyness and plans.

Creative non-fiction is such a liberating genre because it allows the non-fiction writer, whether he or she be journalist or essayist, to use all of the techniques of the fiction writer and all of the ideas, creative approaches, that fiction writers get a chance to use, but they have to use it in a true story.