Perhaps the best way to write is to do so as if one were already dead, afraid of no one’s reactions, answerable to no one’s views.
NADINE GORDIMERPerhaps 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.
More Nadine Gordimer Quotes
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One can’t measure how a mood of confidence comes about.
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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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Sincerity is never having an idea of oneself.
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The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Sociology extracts it. The writer loses Eden, writes to be read and comes to realize that he is answerable.
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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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Keenness of hearing revives when one is alone.
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I shall never write an autobiography, I’m much too jealous of my privacy for that.
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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 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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The tension between standing apart, and being fully involved; that is what makes a writer.
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You can’t change a regime on the basis of compassion. There’s got to be something harder.
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Success sometimes may be defined as a disaster put on hold. Qualified. Has to be.
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Writing is making sense of life.
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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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A child understands fear, and the hurt and hate it brings.
NADINE GORDIMER