Literature is one of the few areas left where black and white feel some identity of purpose; we all struggle under censorship.
NADINE GORDIMERLiterature is one of the few areas left where black and white feel some identity of purpose; we all struggle under censorship.
NADINE GORDIMERCan 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 GORDIMERYou can’t change a regime on the basis of compassion. There’s got to be something harder.
NADINE GORDIMERFiction is a way of exploring possibilities present but undreamt of in the living of a single life.
NADINE GORDIMERI’m forty-nine but I could be twenty-five except for my face and my legs.
NADINE GORDIMERSentiment is for those who don’t know what to do next.
NADINE GORDIMERThe 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 GORDIMERCommunists are the last optimists.
NADINE GORDIMERAny 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 GORDIMERThe function of a writer is to make sense of life. It is such a mystery, it changes all the time, like the light.
NADINE GORDIMERHumans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.
NADINE GORDIMERNothing factual that I write or say will be as truthful as my fiction.
NADINE GORDIMERIt was a miracle; it was all a miracle: and one ought to have known, from the sufferings of saints, that miracles are horror.
NADINE GORDIMERit’s impossible to conquer all fear and loss by preparation. There are always sources of desolation that aren’t taken into account because no one knows what they will be.
NADINE GORDIMERTime is change; we measure its passage by how much things alter.
NADINE GORDIMERI have learned since that sometimes the things we want most are impossible for us. You may long to come home, yet wander forever.
NADINE GORDIMER