176 Quotes by Nadine Gordimer

Books don’t need batteries.

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.

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.

In a certain sense a writer is ‘selected’ by his subject – his subject being the consciousness of his own era.

Writers themselves don’t analyze what they do; to analyze would be to look down while crossing a canyon on a tightrope.

You know history better than I do, you’ve been teaching all your life. Without real opposition you get dictators down the line. Idi, Amin, Mugabe. No democracy without opposition.

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.

Sentiment is for those who don’t know what to do next.

If one will always have to feel white first, and African second, it would be better not to stay on in Africa.