Those are big collisions, Hally. They make for a lot of bruises. People get hurt in all that bumping, and we're sick and tired of it now. It's been going on for too long. Are we never going to get it right?...Learn to dance life like champions instead of always being just a bunch of beginners at it?

Be careful, Hally."

"Of what? The truth? I seem to be the only one around here who is prepared to face it.

'Master Harold' is about me as a little boy, and my father, who was an alcoholic. There's a thread running down the Fugard line of alcoholism. Thankfully I haven't passed it on to my child, a wonderful daughter who's stone-cold sober. But I had the tendency from my father, just as he had had it from his father.

I've had one experience of writer's block in my life, and it was living hell. It was a terror for me.

My life had been defined by the apartheid years. Now we were going into an era of democracy... and I believed that I didn't really have a function as a useful artist in that anymore.

There are times in my 30 years in the theater that I have come perilously close to losing faith in the one form of action I have in this life.