Nadine Gordimer

But there's no indemnity. You can't be afraid to do good in case evil results.

Communists are the last optimists.

There are always sources of desolation that aren't taken into account because no one knows what they will be.

The main reason why we're still where we are is blacks haven't united as blacks because we're told all the time to do it is to be racist.

Flora pretended to cuddle me against the cold, but I didn't need her kind of emotional excitation. She talked about 'the girls' in there, and my mother was one of them.

Strong emotion - faith? - has different ways of being manifested among the different disciples within which people order their behaviour.

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.

It'll be enough to take your mind off your stomach. - When lovers cannot touch, they tease each other instead.

Our liberation cannot be divorced from black consciousness because we cannot be conscious of ourselves and at the same time remain slaves -

The will is my own. The emotion's my own. The right to be inconsolable. When I feel, there's no 'we', only 'I'.

Conrad went off some evenings for Spanish lessons and sometimes came back with the girl who taught him.

Among the group of people waiting at the fortress was a schoolgirl in a brown and yellow uniform holding a green eiderdown quilt and, by the loop at its neck, a red hot-water bottle. (First lines)