The Conservationist Quotes

“You don’t have to be a believer in a lot of superstition and nonsense - there’s a difference between thinking to oneself and thinking as a form of conversation, even if there are no answers.”
― Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist

“She put her hand on him, just under the left pectoral muscle, half patted, half slapped, half caressed. — This is what I believe in - flesh-and-blood people, no gods up in the sky or anywhere on the ground. ‘Development’ - one great big wonderful all-purpose god of a machine, eh, Superjuggernaut that’s going to make it all all right, put everything right if we just get the finance for it. The money and the know-how machine. Isn’t that it, with you? The politics are of no concern. The ideology doesn’t matter a damn. The poor devils don’t know what’s good for them, anyway. That’s how you justify what you condone - that’s what lets you off the hook, isn’t it - the Great Impartial. Development. No dirty hands or compromised minds. Neither dirty racist nor kaffir-boetie. Neither dirty Commie nor Capitalist pig. It’s all going to be decided by computer - look, no hands! Change is something programmed, not aspired to. No struggle between human beings. That’d be too smelly and too close. Let them eat cake, by all means - if production allows for it, and dividends are not affected, in time. —”
― Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist: Booker Prize Winner

“The height of the grass. Look at the reeds. Everything bends, blends, folds. Everything is continually swaying, flowing rippling waving surging streaming fingering.”
― Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist

“A funny thing, the simple pretty ones disintegrate when they drink, the clever handsome ones become more beautiful, their sex comes to the surface.”
― Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist

“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.”
― Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist: Booker Prize Winner