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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.

Nadine Gordimer

It was a miracle; it was all a miracle: and one ought to have known, from the sufferings of saints, that miracles are horror.
NADINE GORDIMER

Horror Known Miracle One Ought Saint Suffer
Your whole life you are really writing one book, which is an attempt to grasp the consciousness of your time and place– a single book written from different stages of your ability.
NADINE GORDIMER

Attempt Book Consciousness Life One Place Really Time Whole
Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.
NADINE GORDIMER

Animal Bless Curse Faculty Higher Human Only Regard Self Torture Want Why
in writing, sex doesn’t matter; it’s the writing that matters.
NADINE GORDIMER

Matter Sex Writing
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 GORDIMER

Chapter Country Day Life Many One Poem September Story Sunny Thousand Transformation Two Work Writer Year
The truth isn’t always beauty, but the hunger for it is.
NADINE GORDIMER

Always Beauty Hunger Truth
Everyone ends up moving alone towards the self
NADINE GORDIMER

Alone End Everyone Move Self Toward
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.
NADINE GORDIMER

Act Come Creation Evidence Extract History Loe People Read Person Pure Realize Sociology Writer
If one will always have to feel white first, and African second, it would be better not to stay on in Africa.
NADINE GORDIMER

Always Better Country Feel First Second Stay While Will
One can’t measure how a mood of confidence comes about.
NADINE GORDIMER

Come Confidence Measure Mood
I shall never write an autobiography, I’m much too jealous of my privacy for that.
NADINE GORDIMER

Autobiography Jealous Much never Privacy Shall That
Power is something of which I am convinced there is no innocence this side of the womb.
NADINE GORDIMER

Convince Innocence Power Sid Something Womb
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.
NADINE GORDIMER

Actual Got Need Out She Thing Think Time Work Writer Writing
There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.
NADINE GORDIMER

Authority Moral Sacrifice
If 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 GORDIMER

Decide Destroy Eath Forget Heaven People Rationalism Set Utopia Would
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.
NADINE GORDIMER

Course Explain Include Life Mystery Personally Purpose Really Write

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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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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