For the last few weeks, I've been completely happy. I've got my next PSA in three weeks' time. It may well show my PSA is starting to go up, and the cancer's coming back. Totally to my surprise, I've acquired this sort of Buddhist Zen outlook. Well, the future doesn't exist. I'm well. I'm happy at the moment. I've had a wonderful, exciting life. I've made lots of mistakes. I've trampled on people - yak, yak, yak, as I discuss in my books. But at the moment, today, the sun is shining. I'm very well. It's not that I'm in denial, but I think, well, all right. It may be bad news in three weeks' time, but that's three weeks away. At the moment, I'm well.

I don’t believe I can really do without teaching.  The reason is, I have to have something so that when I don’t have any ideas and I’m not getting anywhere I can say to myself, “At least I’m living; at least I’m doing something; I’m making some contribution”—it’s just psychological.

Yeah, there were a lot of brave people who stood up. Then, you know, it cost Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers and the three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and Viola Liuzza and a lot of the others their lives, but they were on the right side of history, and they believed if they made this sacrifice that it would work out. And whenever I get discouraged about everything they stood against rising up again, I realize there just are no public, or permanent, victories. You have to keep fighting for freedom.

I sing yes sure and I garden, I have a large garden and I really recreate myself by doing gardening and thinking about something else so that when your mind gets free from all the burden of the daily troubles and then you can start putting something fresh in, you know.

Ultimately, it’s a man who was teaching us English Literature in what we call matricula, the last 2 years of high school. He really was quite extraordinary. When he spoke of a Shakespearean play, you almost thought that he grew up with Shakespeare! He was very good, yes. A black guy who was fantastic and gave us a deep love for literature.

So a great deal has changed, but we in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said, “Watch it. You can kiss reconciliation and forgiveness goodbye, unless the gap between the rich and the poor — the haves and the have-nots — is narrowed, and narrowed quickly and dramatically.” So yes, we face very, very considerable problems.

One moment, Nelson Mandela is in jail, and the next moment, he is walking, a free man. One moment, we are shackled as the oppressed of apartheid; the next, we are voting for the very first time. I was 63 when I voted for the first time in my life in the country of my birth. Nelson Mandela was 76 years of age. But it happened, it happened. It happened partly because the international community supported us. People prayed for us. People demonstrated on our behalf, especially young people. Students at universities and college campuses used to sit out in the baking sunshine to force their institutions to divest and the miracle happened. We became free because we were helped and we want to say a big “thank you” to the world. And, you can become free nonviolently.

I recall when I was about nine picking up a tattered copy of Ebony magazine and I think — I mean, maybe journalists ought to know just how much power they actually have because here I was 10,000 miles away from America with this copy of Ebony magazine and it was describing the exploits of Jackie Robinson and how he broke into major league baseball. Now I didn’t know baseball from ping pong but what was so important for me, what made me grow inches was to know that a black guy had triumphed over all of the obstacles that were placed in his way and there he was now playing for something called Brooklyn Dodgers. Now I didn’t know Brooklyn Dodgers. I didn’t know Jackie, but it helped to exorcise what is the most awful consequence of racial injustice and it is the sense — this demon of self-hate when you have a very low self-esteem.

I know that for a very long time my consuming passion, which was confirmed when I contracted TB — I had TB when I was about 12 or so — was I wanted to be a physician and when I got TB I was even more determined. I want to be physician so that I can find a cure for the scourge. And, in fact, I was admitted to medical school. If we had had the funds maybe today I would have been a physician.

What is rewarding about the priesthood is, one, that you have an incredible privilege of being privy to some of the most extraordinary things about people. I mean, as their parish priest, you visit people who are sick, say, on their death bed and they tell you things that they probably have not shared with any other person. You are privileged to bring the Holy Sacrament to people at a time when they are probably at their lowest. But you also have the privilege of meeting up with people at their moment of great joy, when they are getting married, or when they have a child baptized.