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 GORDIMERWhat 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.
More Nadine Gordimer Quotes
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Mostly I’m interviewed by white people, and identified with white society.
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One can’t measure how a mood of confidence comes about.
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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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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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Books dont need batteries
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About 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.
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Very often we support change, and then are swept away by the change. I think that…you just make your own response to your own generation. A response adequate to your time.
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When I was a child, we seemed to be living in a world remote from the rest of the world. But television has made a great difference to all of us.
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The Communist Party is very popular in South Africa, especially among the young people. Never having had a chance to travel, and having suffered so much under capitalism, they still can’t believe that the Russian people themselves have rejected it.
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A truly living human being cannot remain neutral.
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The truth isn’t always beauty, but the hunger for it is.
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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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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.
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Communists are the last optimists.
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I couldn’t be sufficiently interested in human beings to be a writer if I had contempt for human beings.
NADINE GORDIMER