Nadine Gordimer
Nadine Gordimer
Nadine Gordimerwas a South African writer, political activist and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was recognized as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity"...
NationalitySouth African
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth20 November 1923
compassion regimes harder
You can't change a regime on the basis of compassion. There's got to be something harder.
drama writing mean
The process of writing fiction is totally unconscious. It comes from what you are learning, as you live, from within. For me, all writing is a process of discovery. We are looking for the meaning of life. No matter where you are, there are conflicts and dramas everywhere. It is the process of what it means to be a human being; how you react and are reacted upon, these inward and outer pressures. If you are writing with a direct cause in mind, you are writing propaganda. It's fatal for a fiction writer.
country rats winner
And this indifference is still very much present in modern South Africa. Just listen to Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer - a representative of the British elite in this country: Afrikaner women are lower than rats, closer related to plants, just fit enough to be raped in an act of genus preservation.
hurt children hate
A child understands fear, and the hurt and hate it brings.
moving self ends
Everyone ends up moving alone towards the self
writing discovery voyages
Writing is always a voyage of discovery.
writing needs made
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.
looks would-be canyons
Writers themselves don't analyze what they do; to analyze would be to look down while crossing a canyon on a tightrope.
writing thinking work-out
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.
eras consciousness certain
In a certain sense a writer is 'selected' by his subject - his subject being the consciousness of his own era.
believe writing solitude
I believe - I know (there are not many things I should care to dogmatize about, on the subject of writing) that writers need solitude, and seek alienation of a kind every day of their working lives. (And remember, they are not even aware when and when not they are working.) ... The tension between standing apart and being fully involved; that is what makes a writer.
betrayal writing thinking
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.
light mystery function
The function of a writer is to make sense of life. It is such a mystery, it changes all the time, like the light.
home long forever
I have learned since that sometimes the things we want most are impossible for us. You may long to come home, yet wander forever.