The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Sociology extracts it. The writer loses Eden, writes to be read and comes to realize that he is answerable.
NADINE GORDIMERHumans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.
More Nadine Gordimer Quotes
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If I dreamt this, while walking, walking in the London streets, the subconscious of each and every other life, past and present, brushing me in passing, what makes it real? Writing it down.
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Everyone ends up moving alone towards the self
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My answer is: Recognize yourself in others
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In a certain sense a writer is ‘selected’ by his subject – his subject being the consciousness of his own era.
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A truly living human being cannot remain neutral.
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What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us what we are while there’s another force from inside battling to make us something else.
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Writers themselves don’t analyze what they do; to analyze would be to look down while crossing a canyon on a tightrope.
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Success sometimes may be defined as a disaster put on hold. Qualified. Has to be.
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a writer doesn’t only need the time when he’s actually writing – he or she has got to have time to think and time just to let things work out. Nothing is worse for this than society. Nothing is worse for this than the abrasive, if enjoyable, effect of other people.
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About the joys and the courage, I really don’t know what other people think. I just know that I’ve never left Africa. I’ve lived there all my life. And one of the wonderful things, in spite of all the terrible things that happen in South Africa, is the way people continue to keep their dignity.
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I cannot live with someone who can’t live without me.
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It’s absolutely fatal to your writing to think about how your work will be received. It’s a betrayal of whatever talent you have.
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In various and different circumstances certain objects and individuals are going to turn out to be vital. The wager of survival cannot, by its nature, reveal which, in advance of events.
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Music has no limits of a life-span.
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Communists are the last optimists.
NADINE GORDIMER