123 quotes
Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.
Writing and Being (1991)
I should have given it up long ago if it had not been for her.
Six Feet of the Country (1956)
How to break in: with a name, a statement.
A Soldier's Embrace: Stories (1980)
But there's no indemnity. You can't be afraid to do good in case evil results.
Burger's Daughter (1979)
What is shameful cannot be shared. What is shameful, separates.
The House Gun (1997)
In their global eclecticism they recognize that no single society, no country or continent can presume to create a truly human culture for the world.
Speech at the Nobel Banquet (1991)
Conrad went off some evenings for Spanish lessons and sometimes came back with the girl who taught him.
Burger's Daughter (1979)
Change the world but keep bits of it the way I like it for myself — who wouldn’t make the world over if it were to be as easy as that.
The Conservationist (1974)
A desert is a place without expectation.
The Quotable Gordimer (2014)
For nearly thirty years the Communist Party allied itself as a legal organization with the African struggle for black rights and the extension of the franchise to the black majority.
Burger's Daughter (1979)
It'll be enough to take your mind off your stomach. - When lovers cannot touch, they tease each other instead.
Burger's Daughter (1979)
Two creatures caught in the headlights of catastrophe. Nothing between Duncan and the judge, passing sentence, but Motsamai and his confidence.
The House Gun (1998)
The blackman is not fighting for equality with whites. Blackness is the blackman refusing to believe the whiteman's way of life is best for blacks.
Burger's Daughter (1979)
Without real opposition you get dictators down the line. Idi, Amin, Mugabe. No democracy without opposition.
No Time Like the Present (2010)
And for a moment I accept the triumph as I had managed it.”
Six Feet of the Country (1956)
The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Sociology extracts it. The writer loses Eden, writes to be read and comes to realize that he is answerable.
The Tanner Lectures on Human Values (1985)
You can't change a regime on the basis of compassion. There's got to be something harder.
'Art is the representation not of the body but of the forces which created the body.'
Writing and Being (1991)
The best way a writer can serve a revolution is to write as well as he can.
Writing and Being (1991)
I suddenly picked up the gun on the table. And then he was quiet.
The House Gun (1998)