Nadine Gordimer Quotes

South African writer (1923–2014)

Nadine Gordimer (20 November 1923 – 13 July 2014) was a South African Jewish novelist and writer, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in literature and 1974 Booker Prize.*, recognized as a writer "who through her magnificent epic writing has ... been of very great benefit to humanity".[1]

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My answer is: Recognize yourself in others

Duncan found her and took her to hospital. He brought her back to life. Literally. She owes her life to Duncan; or she blames him.

Had not been able to tell them anything that was leading him towards that Friday night when something terrible happened to him.

The gap between the committed and the indifferent is a Sahara whose faint trails, followed by the mind's eye only, fade out in sand.

Do we ever live really in the present? I don’t think so, not entirely, do you?...There are always intrusions, sometimes welcome, sometimes not, from the past.

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.

You know history better than I do, you've been teaching all your life. Without real opposition you get dictators down the line. Idi, Amin, Mugabe. No democracy without opposition.

I was evidence of the theory that books are made out of other books . . . But I did not remain so for long, nor do I believe any potential writer could.

Wait for it; it will fall so quiet, hardly more than a faint roughness snagging the air in the ear's chambers. ... And begins once more. The panting reaches up up up down down down to that awe-ful groan!

There is more truth in my fiction than in nonfiction. I think, subconsciously, [if] I am writing an article or talking to you, there is a certain amount of self-censorship going on. But in my fiction I am writing as if I were dead. I want to say it all. I want to say everything I know.

If somebody is partly frivolous or superficial, has moments of cruelty or self-doubt, I don’t write them off, because I think that absolutely everybody has what are known as human failings.

Oh dear, I’m sorry, Bra[brother] and Duncan remembers that “it was exactly the manner, the words, with which the man had announced the end of the months they had lived as lovers."

The malediction is upon him even if the law does not exact it.

The truth can only be pieced together from these different bits of knowledge, these different impressions, these different experiences. Goethe said: “You close your eyes and you dip your hand into your society and you bring up a little bit of the truth.” And that is the material of your writing.

It'll be enough to take your mind off your stomach. - When lovers cannot touch, they tease each other instead.