A truly living human being cannot remain neutral.
NADINE GORDIMERA truly living human being cannot remain neutral.
NADINE GORDIMERAbout the joys and the courage, I really don’t know what other people think. I just know that I’ve never left Africa. I’ve lived there all my life. And one of the wonderful things, in spite of all the terrible things that happen in South Africa, is the way people continue to keep their dignity.
NADINE GORDIMERMy answer is: Recognize yourself in others
NADINE GORDIMERSeptember 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 never talk about what I’m writing about currently, never. It’s private work on your own, no need or obligation to talk about it. Writers are made into performers these days, including myself, but there are some instances in which I will not perform.
NADINE GORDIMERWritten words still have the amazing power to bring out the best and worst of human nature
NADINE GORDIMERNewspapers are horror happening to other people.
NADINE GORDIMERThe primacy of the word, basis of the human psyche, that has in our age been used for mind-bending persuasion and brain-washing pulp, disgraced by Gobbles and debased by advertising copy, remains a force for freedom that flies out between all bars.
NADINE GORDIMERIf 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 GORDIMERI shall never write an autobiography, I’m much too jealous of my privacy for that.
NADINE GORDIMERPerhaps 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 GORDIMERThe truth isn’t always beauty, but the hunger for it is.
NADINE GORDIMERIn 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 GORDIMERThe caged eagle become a metaphor for all forms of isolation, the ultimate in imprisonment. A zoo is prison.
NADINE GORDIMERThere is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.
NADINE GORDIMERSincerity is never having an idea of oneself.
NADINE GORDIMER