Nadine Gordimer

“Power is something of which I am convinced there is no innocence this side of the womb.”

“I cannot live with someone who can't live without me.”

“Responsibility is what awaits outside the Eden of Creativity.”

“There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.”

“Nothing factual that I write or say will be as truthful as my fiction.”

“Every morning, when people are getting up in the tent, the babies are crying, people are pushing each other at the taps outside and some children are already pulling the crusts of porridge off the pots we ate from last night, my first-born brother and I clean our shoes. Our grandmother makes us sit on our mats with our legs straight out so she can look carefully at our shoes to make sure we have done it properly. No other children in the tent have real school shoes. When we three look at them it’s as if we are in a real house again, with no war, no away.”

“Communists are the last optimists.”

“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.”

“I don't cry. Unfortunately, I seem rather short of tears, so my sorrows have to stay inside me.”

“People give one another things that can't be gift wrapped.”