“Eleanor Baker is een van Afrikaans se beste skrywers en dis jammer dat baie Suid-Afrikaners dit dalk nooit, of te laat, gaan agterkom nie. ”

“Dis nie net die dooies wat in jou inweek en deel van jou word nie: dis almal, elke enkele een met wie jy 'n entjie pad saamreis; elkeen gee af aan jou, jy aan hulle. Nooit is dit net jy en jy alleen nie. Nooit gebeur iets net NOU nie. Altyd sleep dit slierte saam. Altyd suig dit by voorbaat al die toekoms in.”

“Everything one used to take for granted, with so much certainty that one never even bothered to enquire about it, now turns out to be illusion. Your certainties are proven lies. And what happens if you start probing? Must you learn a wholly new language first?'Humanity'. Normally one uses it as a synonym for compassion; charity; decency; integrity. 'He is such a human person.' Must one now go in search of an entirely different set of synonyms: cruelty; exploitation; unscrupulousness; or whatever?”

“How dare I presume to say: He is my friend, or even, more cautiously, I think I know him? At the very most we are like two strangers meeting in the white wintry veld and sitting down together for a while to smoke a pipe before proceeding on their separate ways. No more.Alone. Alone to the very end. I… every one of us. But to have been granted the grace of meeting and touching so fleetingly: is that not the most awesome and wonderful thing one can hope for in this world?”

“I can see it, hear it, feel it, taste it - but I can never be on the inside of it with you. I cannot even be sure whether I really know what it is like. Is it 'like' my own? Or incomparable? Just as I can never know if what you see at any given moment is exactly the same as what I see. We look at a colour. We both call it red. But it is only because we have been taught to call it by that name. There is no guarantee - not ever - that we see it in the same way, that your red is my red.”

“But for Mozart love is only the litmus test. To determine whether one is truly free or not.”

“To respect the dignity of a relationship also implies accepting the end when it comes. Except in my mind, except in my dreams, where the aftertaste of her still lingers.”