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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.

Nadine Gordimer

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Nadine Gordimer
Age: 90 †
Born: 1923
Born: November 20
Died: 2014
Died: July 13
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
Scientific Editor
Short Story Writer
Writer
Defeat
Existence
Defies
Art
Degrade
Life
Representing
Attempts
Celebration
Spite
Destroy

More quotes by Nadine Gordimer

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The facts are always less than what really happened.
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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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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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People give one another things that can't be gift wrapped.
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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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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
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The gap between the committed and the indifferent is a Sahara whose faint trails, followed by the mind's eye only, fade out in sand.
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I cannot live with someone who can't live without me.
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My answer is: Recognize yourself in others
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A child understands fear, and the hurt and hate it brings.
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Mostly I'm interviewed by white people, and identified with white society.
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Mumbling obeisance to abhorrence of apartheid is like those lapsed believers who cross themselves when entering a church.
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Written words still have the amazing power to bring out the best and worst of human nature
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The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.
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As writers, we are exploring the mystery, the mystery of existence.
Nadine Gordimer
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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.
Nadine Gordimer
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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
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Literature is one of the few areas left where black and white feel some identity of purpose we all struggle under censorship.
Nadine Gordimer
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Newspapers are horror happening to other people.
Nadine Gordimer
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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