If people would forget about utopia! When rationalism destroyed heaven and decided to set it up here on earth, that most terrible of all goals entered human ambition. It was clear there’d be no end to what people would be made to suffer for it.
NADINE GORDIMERPeople give one another things that can’t be gift wrapped.
More Nadine Gordimer Quotes
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Exile as a mode of genius no longer exists; in place of Joyce we have the fragments of work appearing in Index on Censorship.
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From Ernest Hemingway’s stories I learned to listen within my stories for what went unsaid by my characters.
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A desert is a place without expectation.
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About the joys and the courage, I really don’t know what other people think. I just know that I’ve never left Africa. I’ve lived there all my life. And one of the wonderful things, in spite of all the terrible things that happen in South Africa, is the way people continue to keep their dignity.
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The caged eagle become a metaphor for all forms of isolation, the ultimate in imprisonment. A zoo is prison.
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Can you imagine writers influencing things in America? Can you imagine a writer in England influencing? Absolutely not. And in France? It used to be, but no more – absolutely not. France used to, at least, have writers as diplomats, but not any more.
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There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.
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Sentiment is for those who don’t know what to do next.
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A truly living human being cannot remain neutral.
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Censorship may have to do with literature; but literature has nothing whatever to do with censorship.
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A child understands fear, and the hurt and hate it brings.
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The function of a writer is to make sense of life. It is such a mystery, it changes all the time, like the light.
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One can’t measure how a mood of confidence comes about.
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Peace. The upland serenity of high altitude, the openness of grassland without indigenous bush or trees; the greening, yellowing or silver-browning that prevailed, according to season.
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I have learned since that sometimes the things we want most are impossible for us. You may long to come home, yet wander forever.
NADINE GORDIMER