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 GORDIMERI cannot live with someone who can’t live without me.
More Nadine Gordimer Quotes
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Responsibility is what awaits outside the Eden of Creativity.
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If you live in Europe . . . things change . . . but continuity never seems to break. You don’t have to throw the past away.
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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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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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in writing, sex doesn’t matter; it’s the writing that matters.
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As writers, we are exploring the mystery, the mystery of existence.
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Music has no limits of a life-span.
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Learning to write sent me falling, falling through the surface of the South African way of life.
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I have learned since that sometimes the things we want most are impossible for us. You may long to come home, yet wander forever.
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I couldn’t be sufficiently interested in human beings to be a writer if I had contempt for human beings.
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Sentiment is for those who don’t know what to do next.
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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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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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There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.
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Newspapers are horror happening to other people.
NADINE GORDIMER