123 quotes
The process of standing apart and being involved has come.
Writing and Being (1991)
Discovery is not an end. Only a new mystery.
The House Gun (1998)
An accolade, one side a white cheek, the other a black. The white one she kissed on the left cheek, the black one on the right, as if these were two sides of one face.
A Soldier's Embrace: Stories (1980)
She avoided walking past the barracks because of the machine guns the young sentries had in place of rifles.
A Soldier's Embrace: Stories (1980)
The ugly mansions of the rich who had fled stood empty on the bluff above the sea.
A Soldier's Embrace: Stories (1980)
Had not been able to tell them anything that was leading him towards that Friday night when something terrible happened to him.
The House Gun (1998)
Presence of death standing by makes a sacrament of tenuous relationships.
The Quotable Gordimer (2014)
It is not in his nature. Never. I swear on my own life.
The House Gun (1998)
Communists are the last optimists.
Burger's Daughter (1979)
People in the farming community understand how he must feel. Bad enough to have killed a man, without helping the Party’s, the government’s, the country’s enemies, as well.
The Moment Before the Gun Went Off (1988)
The question mark remains. It hangs over peace negotiations - that vital base for the answer an outsider who believes in justice surely must support: two fully independent states on agreed, realistic frontiers.
Strong emotion - faith? - has different ways of being manifested among the different disciples within which people order their behaviour.
Burger's Daughter (1979)
Between its vandyke teeth, in the mouth opened in a roar too terrible to be heard, it had a black tongue.
The Soft Voice of the Serpent (1952)
Writing is indeed, some kind of affliction in its demands as the most solitary and introspective of occupations.
Speech at the Nobel Banquet (1991)
Creaking, jerking, jostling, gasping, the train filled the station.
The Soft Voice of the Serpent (1952)
...cannot distinguish which Duncan is being described in truth.
The House Gun (1998)
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.
None to Accompany Me (1994)
When the body is no longer an attraction, an expression of desire, to bare your breasts and belly is simple; you lay like dogs or cats grateful for the sun.
Burger's Daughter (1979)
As a writer, I'm a composite intelligence.
The Quotable Gordimer (2014)
Bring death and life together.
The House Gun (1998)