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Where Do Whites Fit In The New Africa? Nowhere, I'm Inclined To Sayand I Do Believe That It Is True That Even The Gentlest And Most Westernised Africans Would Like The Emotional Idea Of The Continent Entirely Without The Complication Of The Presence Of The White Man For A Generation Or Two. But Nowhere, As An Answer For Us Whites, Is In The Same Category As Remarks Like What's The Use Of Living? In The Face Of The Threat Of Atomic Radiation. We Are Living; We Are In Africa.

-Nadine Gordimer

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Where Do Whites Fit

Nadine Gordimer

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Where Do Whites Fit In The New Africa? Nowhere, I'm Inclined To Sayand I Do Believe That It Is True That Even The Gentlest And Most Westernised Africans Would Like The Emotional Idea Of The Continent Entirely Without The Complication Of The Presence Of The White Man For A Generation Or Two. But Nowhere, As An Answer For Us Whites, Is In The Same Category As Remarks Like What's The Use Of Living? In The Face Of The Threat Of Atomic Radiation. We Are Living; We Are In Africa.

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In Various And Different Circumstances Certain Objects And Individuals Are Going To Turn Out To Be Vital. The Wager Of Survival Cannot, By Its Nature, Reveal Which, In Advance Of Events.

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Mumbling Obeisance To Abhorrence Of Apartheid Is Like Those Lapsed Believers Who Cross Themselves When Entering A Church.

I Couldn't Be Sufficiently Interested In Human Beings To Be A Writer If I Had Contempt For Human Beings.

Art Defies Defeat By Its Very Existence, Representing The Celebration Of Life, In Spite Of All Attempts To Degrade And Destroy It.

Power Is Something Of Which I Am Convinced There Is No Innocence This Side Of The Womb.

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Enemy Of Progress

Once You Have Some Sort Of Reputation In The Outside World, They Will Try To Woo You. They Will Say, "won't You Come And Be On A Talk Program About Books? That's Not Political." Then They Can Say To The Outside World, "see How Free It Is, She Appears On Television. See How Free It Is." So I Refused To Have Anything Of Mine Read Or Dramatized On South African Television.

When It Comes To Their Essential Faculty As Writers, All Writers Are Androgynous Beings.

People Give One Another Things That Can't Be Gift Wrapped.

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.

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Learning To Write Sent Me Falling, Falling Through The Surface Of The South African Way Of Life.

The Tension Between Standing Apart, And Being Fully Involved; That Is What Makes A Writer.

Responsibility Is What Awaits Outside The Eden Of Creativity.

I Shall Never Write An Autobiography, I'm Much Too Jealous Of My Privacy For That.

In A Country Like South Africa, Writers Have Nuisance Value, Because Those Of Us Who Have Become Known Overseas Have Certainly Helped To Inform People About What Life Is Like There.

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.

In A Democracy - Even If It Is A So-called Democracy Like Our White-?litist One - The Greatest Veneration One Can Show The Rule Of Law Is To Keep A Watch On It, And To Reserve The Right To Judge Unjust Laws And The Subversion Of The Function Of The Law By The Power Of The State. That Vigilance Is The Most Important Proof Of Respect For The Law.

Certainly The People Who Are Close To Me Are Happier. They Feel Freer.

Everyone Ends Up Moving Alone Towards The Self

Writers Themselves Don't Analyze What They Do; To Analyze Would Be To Look Down While Crossing A Canyon On A Tightrope.

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If One Will Always Have To Feel White First, And African Second, It Would Be Better Not To Stay On In Africa

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Nothing Fades So Quickly As What Is Unchanged.

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Freedom Of Speech

Sentiment Is For Those Who Don't Know What To Do Next.

The Truth Isn't Always Beauty, But The Hunger For It Is.

Fiction Is A Way Of Exploring Possibilities Present But Undreamt Of In The Living Of A Single Life.

I Cannot Live With Someone Who Can't Live Without Me.

The Facts Are Always Less Than What Really Happened.

There's No Tiling Moral About Beauty.

Communists Are The Last Optimists.

Disaster Is Private, In Its Way, As Love Is.

Newspapers Are Horror Happening To Other People.

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I'm A Candle Flame That Sways In Currents Of Air You Can't See. You Need To Be The One Who Steadies Me To Burn.

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Censorship May Have To Do With Literature; But Literature Has Nothing Whatever To Do With Censorship.

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