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.
NADINE GORDIMERNothing factual that I write or say will be as truthful as my fiction.
More Nadine Gordimer Quotes
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Fiction is a way of exploring possibilities present but undreamt of in the living of a single life.
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I’m forty-nine but I could be twenty-five except for my face and my legs.
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If one will always have to feel white first, and African second, it would be better not to stay on in Africa.
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Sincerity is never having an idea of oneself.
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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.
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Mostly I’m interviewed by white people, and identified with white society.
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Peace. The upland serenity of high altitude, the openness of grassland without indigenous bush or trees; the greening, yellowing or silver-browning that prevailed, according to season.
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The tension between standing apart, and being fully involved; that is what makes a writer.
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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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when it comes to their essential faculty as writers, all writers are androgynous beings.
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A truly living human being cannot remain neutral.
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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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Sentiment is for those who don’t know what to do next.
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I’m a candle flame that sways in currents of air you can’t see. You need to be the one who steadies me to burn.
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In a certain sense a writer is ‘selected’ by his subject – his subject being the consciousness of his own era.
NADINE GORDIMER