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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

Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you’ve made sense of one small area.
NADINE GORDIMER

Area Life Made Make Perhaps Sense Small Writing
Written words still have the amazing power to bring out the best and worst of human nature
NADINE GORDIMER

Amazing Best Bring Human Nature Power Word Worst Written
The solitude of writing is also quite frightening. It’s quite close to madness, one just disappears for a day and loses touch.
NADINE GORDIMER

Close Day Disappear Frightening Happiness Madness One Quite Solitude Touch Writing
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.
NADINE GORDIMER

Absolutely Betray Have Recieve Talent Think Work Write
Keenness of hearing revives when one is alone.
NADINE GORDIMER

Alone Hear Keenness One Review
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.
NADINE GORDIMER

Continuing Convenience Definition Gap Menn Narrow Perhaps Progress Women
There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.
NADINE GORDIMER

Authority Moral Sacrifice
A child understands fear, and the hurt and hate it brings.
NADINE GORDIMER

Bring Child Fear Hate Hurt Understand
If people would forget about utopia! When rationalism destroyed heaven and decided to set it up here on earth, that most terrible of all goals entered human ambition. It was clear there’d be no end to what people would be made to suffer for it.
NADINE GORDIMER

Decide Destroy Eath Forget Heaven People Rationalism Set Utopia Would
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
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.
NADINE GORDIMER

Among Communist Country Especially Party People Popular Young
It was a miracle; it was all a miracle: and one ought to have known, from the sufferings of saints, that miracles are horror.
NADINE GORDIMER

Horror Known Miracle One Ought Saint Suffer
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.
NADINE GORDIMER

Banned Country Decide Fellow Government Nothing Television Want Write
The country of the tourist pamphlet always is another country, an embarrassing abstraction of the desirable that, thank God, does not exist on this planet, where there are always ants and bad smells and empty Coca-Cola bottles to keep the grubby finger-print of reality upon the beautiful.
NADINE GORDIMER

Abstraction Always Another Country Desirable Embarrassing Exist God Pamphlet Thank Tourist
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
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.
NADINE GORDIMER

Absolutely Country Imagine Influence Thing Writer

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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