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Any writer of any worth at all hopes to play only a pocket-torch of light – and rarely, through genius, a sudden flambeau – into the bloody yet beautiful labyrinth of human experience, of being.

Nadine Gordimer

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.
NADINE GORDIMER

Become Certainty Country Help Known Nuisance Overseas South Value Writer
September 2001. A sunny day in New York. Many of us who are writers were at work on the transformation of life into a poem, story, a chapter of a novel, when terror pounced from the sky, and the world made witness to it.
NADINE GORDIMER

Chapter Country Day Life Many One Poem September Story Sunny Thousand Transformation Two Work Writer Year
There’s no tiling moral about beauty.
NADINE GORDIMER

Beauty Filling Moral No
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.
NADINE GORDIMER

Between Committed Eye Fade Fint Follow Gap Indifferent Mind Only Out Sagara Sand Trail
All worthwhile writing… comes from an individual vision, privately pursued.
NADINE GORDIMER

All Come Individual Privately Purse Vision Worthwhile Writing
Nothing fades so quickly as what is unchanged.
NADINE GORDIMER

Fade Nothing Quickly So Unchnage
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.
NADINE GORDIMER

Brush Country Dreamt Each Other Life Past Present Street Sunbconcious Walk While
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 GORDIMER

Actual Got Need Out She Thing Think Time Work Writer Writing
Everyone ends up moving alone towards the self
NADINE GORDIMER

Alone End Everyone Move Self Toward
From Ernest Hemingway’s stories I learned to listen within my stories for what went unsaid by my characters.
NADINE GORDIMER

Character Country From Learn Listen People Person Place Story Unsaid Went
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.
NADINE GORDIMER

Course Explain Include Life Mystery Personally Purpose Really Write
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.
NADINE GORDIMER

Bring Chosen Country Fundamental People Sense Well
Your whole life you are really writing one book, which is an attempt to grasp the consciousness of your time and place– a single book written from different stages of your ability.
NADINE GORDIMER

Attempt Book Consciousness Life One Place Really Time Whole
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.
NADINE GORDIMER

Certain Circumstance Go Individual Object Out Turn Various Vital
The function of a writer is to make sense of life. It is such a mystery, it changes all the time, like the light.
NADINE GORDIMER

Change Function Life Light Make Mystery Sense Such Time Writer
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

All Child Difference Great Living Made Remote Rest Seem Television World

Any writer of any worth at all hopes to play only a pocket-torch of light – and rarely, through genius, a sudden flambeau – into the bloody yet beautiful labyrinth of human experience, of being.

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Any writer of any worth at all hopes to play only a pocket-torch of light – and rarely, through genius, a sudden flambeau – into the bloody yet beautiful labyrinth of human experience, of being.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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