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A desert is a place without expectation.

Nadine Gordimer

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.
NADINE GORDIMER

Absolutely Country Imagine Influence More Writer
The function of a writer is to make sense of life. It is such a mystery, it changes all the time, like the light.
NADINE GORDIMER

Change Function Life Light Make Mystery Sense Such Time Writer
Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you’ve made sense of one small area.
NADINE GORDIMER

Area Life Made Make Perhaps Sense Small Writing
The country of the tourist pamphlet always is another country, an embarrassing abstraction of the desirable that, thank God, does not exist on this planet, where there are always ants and bad smells and empty Coca-Cola bottles to keep the grubby finger-print of reality upon the beautiful.
NADINE GORDIMER

Abstraction Always Another Country Desirable Embarrassing Exist God Pamphlet Thank Tourist
It’s absolutely fatal to your writing to think about how your work will be received. It’s a betrayal of whatever talent you have.
NADINE GORDIMER

Absolutely Betray Have Recieve Talent Think Work Write
If I dreamt this, while walking, walking in the London streets, the subconscious of each and every other life, past and present, brushing me in passing, what makes it real? Writing it down.
NADINE GORDIMER

Brush Country Dreamt Each Other Life Past Present Street Sunbconcious Walk While
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

Afraid Already Answerable Best Dead One Perhaps Reaction View Way Write
Nothing factual that I write or say will be as truthful as my fiction.
NADINE GORDIMER

Factual Fiction Nothing Say Truthful Write
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
The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Ideology demands it. Society exacts it.
NADINE GORDIMER

Act Creative Demand Evidence Exact Ideology Pure Society
A child understands fear, and the hurt and hate it brings.
NADINE GORDIMER

Bring Child Fear Hate Hurt Understand
Any writer of any worth at all hopes to play only a pocket-torch of light – and rarely, through genius, a sudden flambeau – into the bloody yet beautiful labyrinth of human experience, of being.
NADINE GORDIMER

All Any Ariely Bloody Genius Hope Light Olay Pocket Sudden Through Torch Worth Write Yet
I’m forty-nine but I could be twenty-five except for my face and my legs.
NADINE GORDIMER

Expect Face Five Forty Leg Nine Twenty
The 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 GORDIMER

Basis Bend Brain Human Mind Percussion Primarily Psyche Pulp Use Wash Word
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

Currently Need never No Obligation Own Private Talk Work Write
From Ernest Hemingway’s stories I learned to listen within my stories for what went unsaid by my characters.
NADINE GORDIMER

Character Country From Learn Listen People Person Place Story Unsaid Went

A desert is a place without expectation.

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A desert is a place without expectation.

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