Quote

I shall never write an autobiography, I'm much too jealous of my privacy for that.

Nadine Gordimer

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Nadine Gordimer
Age: 90 †
Born: 1923
Born: November 20
Died: 2014
Died: July 13
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
Scientific Editor
Short Story Writer
Writer
Autobiography
Jealous
Privacy
Shall
Write
Writing
Much
Never

More quotes by Nadine Gordimer

Image
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
Image
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.
Nadine Gordimer
Image
It's easier for the former masters to put aside the masks that hid their humanity than for the former slaves to recognise the faces underneath. Or to trust that this is not a new mask these are wearing.
Nadine Gordimer
Image
Keenness of hearing revives when one is alone.
Nadine Gordimer
Image
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
Image
If people would forget about utopia! When rationalism destroyed heaven and decided to set it up here on earth, that most terrible of all goals entered human ambition. It was clear there'd be no end to what people would be made to suffer for it.
Nadine Gordimer
Image
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
Image
I'm a candle flame that sways in currents of air you can't see. You need to be the one who steadies me to burn.
Nadine Gordimer
Image
Mumbling obeisance to abhorrence of apartheid is like those lapsed believers who cross themselves when entering a church.
Nadine Gordimer
Image
Can you imagine writers influencing things in America? 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
Image
Certainly the people who are close to me are happier. They feel freer.
Nadine Gordimer
Image
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.
Nadine Gordimer
Image
Books dont need batteries
Nadine Gordimer
Image
People give one another things that can't be gift wrapped.
Nadine Gordimer
Image
There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.
Nadine Gordimer
Image
My answer is: Recognize yourself in others
Nadine Gordimer
Image
The 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 Gordimer
Image
If you look at the recent Nobel Prize winners, one couldn't say that the work didn't matter and the political commitment did. Who had ever heard of the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz? He is not politically involved. Octavio Paz is a great poet, also not politically involved. The Nobel Prize is for literature, for the quality of work over the years.
Nadine Gordimer
Image
It was a miracle it was all a miracle: and one ought to have known, from the sufferings of saints, that miracles are horror.
Nadine Gordimer
Image
Peace. The upland serenity of high altitude, the openness of grassland without indigenous bush or trees the greening, yellowing or silver-browning that prevailed, according to season.
Nadine Gordimer