Art defies defeat by its very existence, representing the celebration of life, in spite of all attempts to degrade and destroy it.
NADINE GORDIMERArt defies defeat by its very existence, representing the celebration of life, in spite of all attempts to degrade and destroy it.
NADINE GORDIMERThe gap between the committed and the indifferent is a Sahara whose faint trails, followed by the mind’s eye only, fade out in sand.
NADINE GORDIMERCensorship may have to do with literature; but literature has nothing whatever to do with censorship.
NADINE GORDIMERThe caged eagle become a metaphor for all forms of isolation, the ultimate in imprisonment. A zoo is prison.
NADINE GORDIMERHumans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.
NADINE GORDIMERYour 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 GORDIMEREveryone ends up moving alone towards the self
NADINE GORDIMERWriting is making sense of life.
NADINE GORDIMERMostly I’m interviewed by white people, and identified with white society.
NADINE GORDIMERa 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 GORDIMERI cannot live with someone who can’t live without me.
NADINE GORDIMERIn various and different circumstances certain objects and individuals are going to turn out to be vital. The wager of survival cannot, by its nature, reveal which, in advance of events.
NADINE GORDIMERCan 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 GORDIMERThere’s no tiling moral about beauty.
NADINE GORDIMERThe function of a writer is to make sense of life. It is such a mystery, it changes all the time, like the light.
NADINE GORDIMERDisaster is private, in its way, as love is.
NADINE GORDIMER