I couldn’t be sufficiently interested in human beings to be a writer if I had contempt for human beings.
NADINE GORDIMER
I’m a candle flame that sways in currents of air you can’t see. You need to be the one who steadies me to burn.
More Nadine Gordimer Quotes
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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 -
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.
NADINE GORDIMER -
I 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 GORDIMER -
If one will always have to feel white first, and African second, it would be better not to stay on in Africa.
NADINE GORDIMER -
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 -
As writers, we are exploring the mystery, the mystery of existence.
NADINE GORDIMER -
The solitude of writing is also quite frightening. It’s quite close to madness, one just disappears for a day and loses touch.
NADINE GORDIMER -
There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.
NADINE GORDIMER -
Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.
NADINE GORDIMER -
Writing is always a voyage of discovery.
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 -
The caged eagle become a metaphor for all forms of isolation, the ultimate in imprisonment. A zoo is prison.
NADINE GORDIMER -
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 GORDIMER -
Perhaps 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.
NADINE GORDIMER -
Certainly the people who are close to me are happier. They feel freer.
NADINE GORDIMER -
Power is something of which I am convinced there is no innocence this side of the womb.
NADINE GORDIMER