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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
Attempts
Celebration
Spite
Destroy
Defeat
Defies
Existence
Degrade
Art
Life
Representing

More quotes by Nadine Gordimer

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There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.
Nadine Gordimer
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Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area.
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 truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.
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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Sincerity is never having an idea of oneself.
Nadine Gordimer
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Keenness of hearing revives when one is alone.
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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Communists are the last optimists.
Nadine Gordimer
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I have failed at many things, but I have never been afraid.
Nadine Gordimer
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Newspapers are horror happening to other people.
Nadine Gordimer
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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.
Nadine Gordimer
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Sentiment is for those who don't know what to do next.
Nadine Gordimer
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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.
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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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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All worthwhile writing... comes from an individual vision, privately pursued.
Nadine Gordimer
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Very often we support change, and then are swept away by the change. I think that...you just make your own response to your own generation. A response adequate to your time.
Nadine Gordimer
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Books dont need batteries
Nadine Gordimer
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I don't think I am a citizen of the world I am very much a citizen of my own country. But my own country is closely related to other parts of the world and influenced by what happens there.
Nadine Gordimer