The facts are always less than what really happened.
NADINE GORDIMERIf one will always have to feel white first, and African second, it would be better not to stay on in Africa.
More Nadine Gordimer Quotes
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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.
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Sincerity is never having an idea of oneself.
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I cannot live with someone who can’t live without me.
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You can’t change a regime on the basis of compassion. There’s got to be something harder.
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Learning to write sent me falling, falling through the surface of the South African way of life.
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I shall never write an autobiography, I’m much too jealous of my privacy for that.
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Perhaps the best way to write is to do so as if one were already dead, afraid of no one’s reactions, answerable to no one’s views.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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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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I never talk about what I’m writing about currently, never. It’s private work on your own, no need or obligation to talk about it. Writers are made into performers these days, including myself, but there are some instances in which I will not perform.
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Art defies defeat by its very existence, representing the celebration of life, in spite of all attempts to degrade and destroy it.
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As writers, we are exploring the mystery, the mystery of existence.
NADINE GORDIMER