Nadine Gordimer

... what it really was like to live a life determined by the struggle to be free, as desert dwellers' days are determined by the struggle against thirst and those of dwellers amid snow and ice by the struggle against the numbing of cold.

I would be guilty only if I were innocent of working to destroy racism in my country.

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.

The solitude of writing is also quite frightening. It's quite close to madness, one just disappears for a day and loses touch.

But a human being, she, she, cannot simply exist; she is a hurricane, every thought bending and crossing its coherence inside her, nothing will let her be, not for a moment. Every emotion, every thought, is invaded by another.

You don__ have to be a believer in a lot of superstition and nonsense - there__ a difference between thinking to oneself and thinking as a form of conversation, even if there are no answers.

Communists are the last optimists.

I am an African. I am white. I, in my humble way, and others in their much more brave way, have earned that right.

I'm an atheist. I wouldn't even call myself an agnostic. I am an atheist.