The solitude of writing is also quite frightening. It’s quite close to madness, one just disappears for a day and loses touch.
NADINE GORDIMERSuccess sometimes may be defined as a disaster put on hold. Qualified. Has to be.
More Nadine Gordimer Quotes
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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 gap between the committed and the indifferent is a Sahara whose faint trails, followed by the mind’s eye only, fade out in sand.
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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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A truly living human being cannot remain neutral.
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Communists are the last optimists.
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One can’t measure how a mood of confidence comes about.
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The Communist Party is very popular in South Africa, especially among the young people. Never having had a chance to travel, and having suffered so much under capitalism, they still can’t believe that the Russian people themselves have rejected it.
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Written words still have the amazing power to bring out the best and worst of human nature
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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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In a country like South Africa, writers have nuisance value, because those of us who have become known overseas have certainly helped to inform people about what life is like there.
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People give one another things that can’t be gift wrapped.
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Time is change; we measure its passage by how much things alter.
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Well, you know, in the fundamentalist milieu of the Afrikaners, there was a sense that they were a chosen people, that they were bringing civilization to the blacks.
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I never talk about what I’m writing about currently, never. It’s private work on your own, no need or obligation to talk about it. Writers are made into performers these days, including myself, but there are some instances in which I will not perform.
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Certainly the people who are close to me are happier. They feel freer.
NADINE GORDIMER