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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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Nadine Gordimer
Age: 90 †
Born: 1923
Born: November 20
Died: 2014
Died: July 13
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
Scientific Editor
Short Story Writer
Writer
Purpose
White
Black
Left
Censorship
Feel
Areas
Feels
Identity
Struggle
Literature

More quotes by Nadine Gordimer

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a writer doesn't only need the time when he's actually writing - he or she has got to have time to think and time just to let things work out. Nothing is worse for this than society. Nothing is worse for this than the abrasive, if enjoyable, effect of other people.
Nadine Gordimer
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There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.
Nadine Gordimer
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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.
Nadine Gordimer
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Keenness of hearing revives when one is alone.
Nadine Gordimer
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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
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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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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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Written words still have the amazing power to bring out the best and worst of human nature
Nadine Gordimer
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Books dont need batteries
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.
Nadine Gordimer
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If you look at the recent Nobel Prize winners, one couldn't say that the work didn't matter and the political commitment did. Who had ever heard of the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz? He is not politically involved. Octavio Paz is a great poet, also not politically involved. The Nobel Prize is for literature, for the quality of work over the years.
Nadine Gordimer
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A child understands fear, and the hurt and hate it brings.
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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Certainly the people who are close to me are happier. They feel freer.
Nadine Gordimer
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Sincerity is never having an idea of oneself.
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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People give one another things that can't be gift wrapped.
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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As writers, we are exploring the mystery, the mystery of existence.
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