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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
Destroy
Defeat
Existence
Defies
Art
Degrade
Life
Representing
Attempts
Celebration
Spite

More quotes by Nadine Gordimer

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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
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And this indifference is still very much present in modern South Africa. Just listen to Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer - a representative of the British elite in this country: Afrikaner women are lower than rats, closer related to plants, just fit enough to be raped in an act of genus preservation.
Nadine Gordimer
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I decided that I wanted nothing to do with South African government television while any of my fellow writers were banned and couldn't speak publicly.
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
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Keenness of hearing revives when one is alone.
Nadine Gordimer
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I shall never write an autobiography, I'm much too jealous of my privacy for that.
Nadine Gordimer
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I couldn't be sufficiently interested in human beings to be a writer if I had contempt for human beings.
Nadine Gordimer
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Music has no limits of a life-span.
Nadine Gordimer
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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
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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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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.
Nadine Gordimer
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As writers, we are exploring the mystery, the mystery of existence.
Nadine Gordimer
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The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Sociology extracts it. The writer loses Eden, writes to be read and comes to realize that he is answerable.
Nadine Gordimer
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All worthwhile writing... comes from an individual vision, privately pursued.
Nadine Gordimer
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My answer is: Recognize yourself in others
Nadine Gordimer
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Mumbling obeisance to abhorrence of apartheid is like those lapsed believers who cross themselves when entering a church.
Nadine Gordimer
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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.
Nadine Gordimer
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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.
Nadine Gordimer
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Learning to write sent me falling, falling through the surface of the South African way of life.
Nadine Gordimer
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The facts are always less than what really happened.
Nadine Gordimer