Crimes of Conscience

Crimes of Conscience (1991) by Nadine GordimerIn stories set in South Africa a woman betrays her husband's best friend, an activist and spy fall in love, refugees are forced to move, and politics strangles daily life.

Quotes

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  • Sometimes don't you find an old friend becomes something else. Just for a little while,as of a face is turned to another angle ? And next day it's the same old one again. Nothing's changed.
    • Page 45
  • Friends are important for you , aren't they? I mean everybody has friends ,but you. You'd really do anything for your friends. Wouldn't you?
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  • Nearly five years. Advertising, then computers ...
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  • Lawyers work like that... I've noticed. The first few days, it's a matter of people trying each to confuse the other side.'
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  • What a session! I don't know... After two hours ofthat... feel like I'm caught in a roll of sticky tape... unreal...'
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  • I imagine all this sounds rather feeble to you. I don't suppose you're someone who stands on the sidelines.'
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  • Two years ago I just felt I wanted to come back. I couldn't give myself a real reason. I've been doing the same sort of work here — actually, I ran a course at the business school of a university, this year—and I'm slowly beginning to find out I wanted to. To come back. It seems it's something to do with things like this.
    • Page 44
  • Why did the State call witnesses who came right out and said the regime oppressed their spirits and frustrated their normal ambitions?
  • That's to establish credibility. To prove their involvement with the accused, their intimate knowledge of what the accused said and did, to inculpate the accused in what the Defence's going to deny. Don't you see?"
  • but a sign of identification with the humanity of those who had nothing and risked themselves.
  • Nearly five years. Advertising, then computers .
    • Page 44
  • You seem to know so much. As if you'd

been through it yourself Or maybe you're a law student?

    • Page 44
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