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As writers, we are exploring the mystery, the mystery of existence.

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
Writers
Mystery
Existence
Exploring

More quotes by Nadine Gordimer

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Everyone ends up moving alone towards the self
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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You can't change a regime on the basis of compassion. There's got to be something harder.
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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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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Mostly I'm interviewed by white people, and identified with white society.
Nadine Gordimer
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in writing, sex doesn't matter it's the writing that matters.
Nadine Gordimer
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Peace. The upland serenity of high altitude, the openness of grassland without indigenous bush or trees the greening, yellowing or silver-browning that prevailed, according to season.
Nadine Gordimer
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Sincerity is never having an idea of oneself.
Nadine Gordimer
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What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us what we are while there's another force from inside battling to make us something else.
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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There's no tiling moral about beauty.
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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I cannot live with someone who can't live without me.
Nadine Gordimer
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Newspapers are horror happening to other people.
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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Sentiment is for those who don't know what to do next.
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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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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Keenness of hearing revives when one is alone.
Nadine Gordimer