Writing is making sense of life.
NADINE GORDIMERThe tension between standing apart, and being fully involved; that is what makes a writer.
More Nadine Gordimer Quotes
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Responsibility is what awaits outside the Eden of Creativity.
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I decided that I wanted nothing to do with South African government television while any of my fellow writers were banned and couldn’t speak publicly.
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My answer is: Recognize yourself in others
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Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter.
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Can you imagine writers influencing things in America? Can you imagine a writer in England influencing? Absolutely not. And in France? It used to be, but no more – absolutely not. France used to, at least, have writers as diplomats, but not any more.
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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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Keenness of hearing revives when one is alone.
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It’s easier for the former masters to put aside the masks that hid their humanity than for the former slaves to recognise the faces underneath. Or to trust that this is not a new mask these are wearing.
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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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Success sometimes may be defined as a disaster put on hold. Qualified. Has to be.
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Literature is one of the few areas left where black and white feel some identity of purpose; we all struggle under censorship.
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The truth isn’t always beauty, but the hunger for it is.
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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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Communists are the last optimists.
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When I was a child, we seemed to be living in a world remote from the rest of the world. But television has made a great difference to all of us.
NADINE GORDIMER