My mother was a member of the Cape Coloured community. 'Coloured' is the South African word for the half-caste community that was a by-product of the early contact between black and white.

The familiar mood that awaits the sensitive young who are poor and dispossessed is a mood of sharp and painful inferiority, of violently angry tensions, of desperate and overwhelming longings.

I attended school regularly for three years. I learned to read and write. 'Lamb's Tales' from Shakespeare was my favourite reading matter. I stole, by finding, Palgrave's 'Golden Treasury.' These two books, and the 'Everyman' edition of John Keats, were my proudest and dearest possessions, my greatest wealth.

Peter Abrahams Quotes