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Well, you know, in the fundamentalist milieu of the Afrikaners, there was a sense that they were a chosen people, that they were bringing civilization to the blacks.
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
Civilization
Sense
Wells
Well
Milieu
People
Fundamentalist
Blacks
Bringing
Chosen
More quotes by Nadine Gordimer
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
Written words still have the amazing power to bring out the best and worst of human nature
Nadine Gordimer
I shall never write an autobiography, I'm much too jealous of my privacy for that.
Nadine Gordimer
Mostly I'm interviewed by white people, and identified with white society.
Nadine Gordimer
As writers, we are exploring the mystery, the mystery of existence.
Nadine Gordimer
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
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
People give one another things that can't be gift wrapped.
Nadine Gordimer
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
Sincerity is never having an idea of oneself.
Nadine Gordimer
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
Learning to write sent me falling, falling through the surface of the South African way of life.
Nadine Gordimer
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
There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.
Nadine Gordimer
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
Success sometimes may be defined as a disaster put on hold. Qualified. Has to be.
Nadine Gordimer
Literature is one of the few areas left where black and white feel some identity of purpose we all struggle under censorship.
Nadine Gordimer
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
From Ernest Hemingway's stories I learned to listen within my stories for what went unsaid by my characters.
Nadine Gordimer
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
