Top 92 Quotes & Sayings by John Kani - Page 2

When I was asked to write a concept for a telenovela, I didn't underestimate my non-experience in the field.

We haven't got those dreams: 'I wish to become doctor or a lawyer.' Black people in South Africa have been barred in doing anything that would articulate their cause.

I remember the words of my grandmother who died at 102. I remember my great mother, Grand Brika, who died at the age of 106. They talked to us all the time. And my grandmother even lied to me. She said there was royalty. She said that my great-great-great grandfather was the king of the outer Thembu.

When I tell a story, I have to tell it honestly.

Apartheid is a lie, people can work together, people can create together.

In 1990 there were about 300 scripts being written demanding the release of Nelson Mandela. And suddenly we watched Mandela walking out of prison. So those scripts had to be destroyed.

My love, my passion, my everything is this continent of Africa. I have always celebrated African humanity.

In any character you are given to play, be it evil/good/whatever character, you begin with self. You examine yourself and ruthlessly see similarities between you and the devil, or between you and the dictator, or between you and the kind man.

'iNkaba' has made me famous in the living rooms of the people of my country. It was almost like being famous all over again. People stop me in the street and shopping malls to take pictures.

Very rarely in the life of an actor and a performer do you do something you truly believe in, do you do something you are absolutely proud of.

The government harasses everything. The government must keep a constant surveillance of all activities by black people in order to maintain their reign over them, especially when they are in a minority.

I am known for always playing virtuous characters.

We never deal with propaganda. We never deal with politics. We never deal with newspaper headlines. We deal with the harsh realities of our lives. We will only comment when there is more bread to eat, more space in which to move, time in which to open your mouth and sing. As long as these things have not happened, we do not talk about politics.

In the global push to stop gender-based violence, men in the entertainment industry need to join forces with women to end violence by men against women and children.

I couldn't really say that a repressive society would result in creative art. But somehow it does help, it is an ingredient, it acts as a Catalyst to a man who is committed.

Our job as artists, we believe, is not to make changes in society. We don't have the ability to do that. We reflect life. We are the mirror of the society to look into. Our job is to raise questions, but we have no answers.

Working with my friend Sir Antony Sher is truly one of the highlights of my career as an artist.

I believe strongly that the word 'protest' is no excuse for bad work. The artist must create.

You can't always play the hero. You have to play the villain.

In 'Lion King,' the music is brilliant. The CGI is amazing.

We are sort of not at the level of entertainment that the Western world is. Everything we see on the play in the screen, we read, we take serious. We take that it speaks to me. And so wonderful to see how the Johannesburg, South African audiences will say: What does it say to me? What does it make me feel? Why am I celebrating it?

If we'd lived in England or America we'd have told stories abut our lives and nobody would have called it protest theatre. But the reality of South Africa was the arrests and detentions and oppression - we could not escape that, so we decided to take it on.

I used to wonder, when my grandmother would tell me what the wolf said to the jackal, how these animals can talk. And, she would say, 'in my stories, animals talk. Shut up and listen.'

'Captain Marvel,' whereby the steel trap is challenged, where the hero is a heroine, where the most powerful person who has the welfare of the future of the human race is a woman. What else can it be? Because that was the role of my mother when I was a kid.

It is a troubled soul that forces the human being to act. It is some kind of gangrene within you, inside of you, that eats your soul, that forces you to save your soul.

I understood the whole purpose of Truth and Reconciliation, and I supported it 100 per cent, but I couldn't deal with it myself.

What does Macbeth want? What does Shakespeare want? What does Othello want? What does James want? What does Arthur Miller want when he wrote? Those things you incorporate and create in the character, and then you step back and you create it. It always must begin with the point of truth within yourself.

Inkaba' is about a feud between two South African families. They have been fighting for years, from one generation to the next. It's like those typical feuds you have in rural KwaZulu-Natal where, after a while, you do not even know why you are fighting.

I always say my first break was a dead man's break.

You found during apartheid a strange occurrence from the white folks themselves. There were those who did make a choice to speak out and stand and be counted in the army of human beings who believed in justice. And then there are those who left.

I have never been attracted to television work. Even to appear in series and soapies. I have always appeared in theatre and major movies, writing plays and other things.

I was the generation who hated the white man, despised him, wanted to shoot him.