The Communist Party is very popular in South Africa, especially among the young people. Never having had a chance to travel, and having suffered so much under capitalism, they still can’t believe that the Russian people themselves have rejected it.
NADINE GORDIMERCan 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.
More Nadine Gordimer Quotes
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There’s no tiling moral about beauty.
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In a certain sense a writer is ‘selected’ by his subject – his subject being the consciousness of his own era.
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It’s easier for the former masters to put aside the masks that hid their humanity than for the former slaves to recognise the faces underneath. Or to trust that this is not a new mask these are wearing.
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Newspapers are horror happening to other people.
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It’s absolutely fatal to your writing to think about how your work will be received. It’s a betrayal of whatever talent you have.
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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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The primacy of the word, basis of the human psyche, that has in our age been used for mind-bending persuasion and brain-washing pulp, disgraced by Gobbles and debased by advertising copy, remains a force for freedom that flies out between all bars.
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Sentiment is for those who don’t know what to do next.
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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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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.
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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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A desert is a place without expectation.
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Success sometimes may be defined as a disaster put on hold. Qualified. Has to be.
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Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter.
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Keenness of hearing revives when one is alone.
NADINE GORDIMER






