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 GORDIMERSeptember 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 GORDIMERI have learned since that sometimes the things we want most are impossible for us. You may long to come home, yet wander forever.
NADINE GORDIMERWritten words still have the amazing power to bring out the best and worst of human nature
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 GORDIMERNewspapers are horror happening to other people.
NADINE GORDIMERWell, you know, in the fundamentalist milieu of the Afrikaners, there was a sense that they were a chosen people, that they were bringing civilization to the blacks.
NADINE GORDIMERI don’t think I am a citizen of the world; I am very much a citizen of my own country. But my own country is closely related to other parts of the world and influenced by what happens there.
NADINE GORDIMERI couldn’t be sufficiently interested in human beings to be a writer if I had contempt for human beings.
NADINE GORDIMERSincerity is never having an idea of oneself.
NADINE GORDIMERWriting is always a voyage of discovery.
NADINE GORDIMERThe tension between standing apart, and being fully involved; that is what makes a writer.
NADINE GORDIMERThe 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 GORDIMERThe 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 GORDIMERAll worthwhile writing… comes from an individual vision, privately pursued.
NADINE GORDIMERMy answer is: Recognize yourself in others
NADINE GORDIMERPower is something of which I am convinced there is no innocence this side of the womb.
NADINE GORDIMER