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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.

Nadine Gordimer

A desert is a place without expectation.
NADINE GORDIMER

Desert Expectation Place Without
If one will always have to feel white first, and African second, it would be better not to stay on in Africa.
NADINE GORDIMER

Always Better Country Feel First Second Stay While Will
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 GORDIMER

Decide Destroy Eath Forget Heaven People Rationalism Set Utopia Would
The function of a writer is to make sense of life. It is such a mystery, it changes all the time, like the light.
NADINE GORDIMER

Change Function Life Light Make Mystery Sense Such Time Writer
Nothing fades so quickly as what is unchanged.
NADINE GORDIMER

Fade Nothing Quickly So Unchnage
The country of the tourist pamphlet always is another country, an embarrassing abstraction of the desirable that, thank God, does not exist on this planet, where there are always ants and bad smells and empty Coca-Cola bottles to keep the grubby finger-print of reality upon the beautiful.
NADINE GORDIMER

Abstraction Always Another Country Desirable Embarrassing Exist God Pamphlet Thank Tourist
All worthwhile writing… comes from an individual vision, privately pursued.
NADINE GORDIMER

All Come Individual Privately Purse Vision Worthwhile Writing
There’s no tiling moral about beauty.
NADINE GORDIMER

Beauty Filling Moral No
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 GORDIMER

Among Communist Country Especially Party People Popular Young
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

Impossible Learn Most Since Sometimes Thing Want
The caged eagle become a metaphor for all forms of isolation, the ultimate in imprisonment. A zoo is prison.
NADINE GORDIMER

Become Cage Eagle Form Imprisonment Isolation Metaphor Prison Ultimate Zoo
Your whole life you are really writing one book, which is an attempt to grasp the consciousness of your time and place– a single book written from different stages of your ability.
NADINE GORDIMER

Attempt Book Consciousness Life One Place Really Time Whole
In a country like South Africa, writers have nuisance value, because those of us who have become known overseas have certainly helped to inform people about what life is like there.
NADINE GORDIMER

Become Certainty Country Help Known Nuisance Overseas South Value Writer
Rebirth. I mean by this simply what happens when the child begins to realise the fact that the black does not enter through the white’s front door is not in the same category as the fact that the dead will never come back.
NADINE GORDIMER

Back Begin Child Enter Fact Front Happen Realise Rebirth Simply Thought White
Time is change; we measure its passage by how much things alter.
NADINE GORDIMER

After Change Measure Much Passage Thing Time
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.
NADINE GORDIMER

Country Courage Joy Know Left never Now Other People Really Think

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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