Nadine Gordimer was a South African writer, novelist and activist. Moral and racial issues formed the crux of her writings. She went on to receive the Noble Prize for Literature in 1991. Through her writings she raised the social issues prevalent in the Apartheid era in South Africa. She also played a crucial role in taking care of people suffering from HIV and AIDS. She became a member of the African National Congress and gave advice to Nelson Mandela on the defense speech in 1964 for which he was convicted for life. She received an ever-growing global recognition for her work in ‘July’s People’, ‘House Gun’ and ‘Burger’s Daughter’. These narratives dealt with the political and racial turmoil which was deep rooted in the country. They also threw light on the sufferings of the ordinary people within the unrest. Being an activist she was very vocal which clearly express her thoughts on issues close to her heart. Reading through these thoughts and quotes by Gordimer will make you introspect about the dark times in the political history of the country and the effects it had on the general consensus. We bring to you a collection of quotes by the renowned writer on relationships, success, disaster, sorrow, humanity, expectation, death, misery and struggle.
Your whole life you are really writing one book, which is an attempt to grasp the consciousness of your time and place– a single book written from different stages of your ability.
...with an understanding of Shakespeare there comes a release from the gullibility that makes you prey to the great shopkeeper who runs the world, and would sell you cheap to illusion.
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
Responsibility is what awaits outside the Eden of Creativity
Nadine Gordimer
I am an African. I am white. I, in my humble way, and others in their much more brave way, have earned that right.
If I dreamt this, while walking, walking in the London streets, the subconscious of each and every other life, past and present, brushing me in passing, what makes it real? Writing it down.
The old phrases crack and meaning shakes out wet and new.
Nadine Gordimer
In every encounter between human beings there is a pace set that belongs to them, and that will be taken up in its own rhythm whenever they are together.
That's it on the maps; nature doesn't acknowledge frontiers. Neither can ecology... Where to begin to understand what we've only got a computerspeak label for, ecosystem? Where to decide it begins.
Nadine Gordimer
The past has no wholeness, it has been etiolated by revised explanations of it, trampled over by hindsight - all their lives.
Equality was not freedom, it had only been the mistaken yearning to become like the people of the town. And who wanted to become like the very ones feared and hated? Envy was not freedom.
