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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

I’m a candle flame that sways in currents of air you can’t see. You need to be the one who steadies me to burn.
NADINE GORDIMER

Air Always Burn Candle Current Frame Need One Sea Steadies
I’m forty-nine but I could be twenty-five except for my face and my legs.
NADINE GORDIMER

Expect Face Five Forty Leg Nine Twenty
Written words still have the amazing power to bring out the best and worst of human nature
NADINE GORDIMER

Amazing Best Bring Human Nature Power Word Worst Written
I have failed at many things, but I have never been afraid.
NADINE GORDIMER

Afraid Been Fail Many never Thing
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
In various and different circumstances certain objects and individuals are going to turn out to be vital. The wager of survival cannot, by its nature, reveal which, in advance of events.
NADINE GORDIMER

Certain Circumstance Go Individual Object Out Turn Various Vital
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
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
It was a miracle; it was all a miracle: and one ought to have known, from the sufferings of saints, that miracles are horror.
NADINE GORDIMER

Horror Known Miracle One Ought Saint Suffer
Certainly the people who are close to me are happier. They feel freer.
NADINE GORDIMER

Certainly Close Feel Free Happier People
If you live in Europe . . . things change . . . but continuity never seems to break. You don’t have to throw the past away.
NADINE GORDIMER

Away Break Change Continuity Country Live never Past Seem Thing Throw
Newspapers are horror happening to other people.
NADINE GORDIMER

Happen Horror Newspaper Other People
September 2001. A sunny day in New York. Many of us who are writers were at work on the transformation of life into a poem, story, a chapter of a novel, when terror pounced from the sky, and the world made witness to it.
NADINE GORDIMER

Chapter Country Day Life Many One Poem September Story Sunny Thousand Transformation Two Work Writer Year
Learning to write sent me falling, falling through the surface of the South African way of life.
NADINE GORDIMER

Country Fall Learn Life Sent Surface Through
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.
NADINE GORDIMER

Absolutely Country Imagine Influence Thing Writer
There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.
NADINE GORDIMER

Authority Moral Sacrifice

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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