Janet Suzman

"Life and art get mixed up sometimes – its what actors draw on."

"Theatre is a white invention, a European invention, and white people go to it. Its in their DNA. It starts with Shakespeare."

"You realise retrospectively mother nature has made you absolutely focused and cow-like. Then you realise your child is infinitely cleverer than you will ever be, and wittier and funnier, and you like being in its company and so you think, I havent done a bad job, really."

"Any government would be really embarrassed to ban Shakespeare."

"The apartheid government was frightened of ridicule. Everyone is frightened of laughter."

"My sensitivity to prejudice is high because I was brought up in South Africa. My awareness of all this crap came earlier, and its stayed with me, and its why Im militantly liberal."

"I remember being absolutely shocked in Australia at the absence of black people."

"The only times I saw black people were once in Adelaide and once at the other end of the continent, in both cases looking desperate on the street, sitting in huddles drinking beer. I realised what Australians had done to their indigenous population, to their other: theyd disappeared them."

"You cant envy something you cant be, can you? You sat and admired what was emerging."

"In South Africa we were criminal, beastly, vile and disgusting, but we didnt commit genocide."

"I stepped back from acting because I was bringing up a child. You cant do both."

"The whole purpose of an actors life is to find great writing, and when it comes along you leap on it like a puppy on a slipper. Youre avid – greedy – hungry – for great gobbets of good writing. Thats all we live for."