From Ernest Hemingway’s stories I learned to listen within my stories for what went unsaid by my characters.
NADINE GORDIMERLiterature is one of the few areas left where black and white feel some identity of purpose; we all struggle under censorship.
More Nadine Gordimer Quotes
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Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.
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Censorship may have to do with literature; but literature has nothing whatever to do with censorship.
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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.
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Mostly I’m interviewed by white people, and identified with white society.
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I don’t think I am a citizen of the world; I am very much a citizen of my own country. But my own country is closely related to other parts of the world and influenced by what happens there.
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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.
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Sentiment is for those who don’t know what to do next.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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it’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.
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The facts are always less than what really happened.
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Writers themselves don’t analyze what they do; to analyze would be to look down while crossing a canyon on a tightrope.
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All worthwhile writing… comes from an individual vision, privately pursued.
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Communists are the last optimists.
NADINE GORDIMER