I have no religion, no political dogma—only plenty of doubts about everything except my conviction that the color-bar is wrong and utterly indefensible. Thus I have found the basis of a moral code that is valid for me. Reason and emotion meet in it, and perhaps that is as near to faith as I shall ever get. The real influence of politics on my writing is the influence of politics on people. Their lives, and I believe their very personalities, are changed by the extreme political circumstances one lives under in South Africa. I am not a politically-minded person by nature. I don't suppose, if I had lived elsewhere, my writing would have reflected politics much. When one is sitting down and writing something, one mustn't refuse any truth that comes to mind, one mustn't censor oneself from following any line of thought.
Nadine Gordimer, Conversations with Nadine Gordimer
