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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

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Can You Imagine Writers

Nadine Gordimer

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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.

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There's No Tiling Moral About Beauty.

In A Certain Sense A Writer Is 'selected' By His Subject - His Subject Being The Consciousness Of His Own Era.

You Can't Be Afraid To Do Good In Case Evil Results.

Censorship May Have To Do With Literature; But Literature Has Nothing Whatever To Do With Censorship.

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.

My Answer Is: Recognize Yourself In Others

Writing Is Making Sense Of Life. You Work Your Whole Life And Perhaps You've Made Sense Of One Small Area.

Writing Is Always A Voyage Of Discovery.

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.

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.

I Shall Never Write An Autobiography, I'm Much Too Jealous Of My Privacy For That.

Written Words Still Have The Amazing Power To Bring Out The Best And Worst Of Human Nature

The Country Of The Tourist Pamphlet Always Is Another Country, An Embarrassing Abstraction Of The Desirable That, Thank God, Does Not Exist On This Planet, Where There Are Always Ants And Bad Smells And Empty Coca-cola Bottles To Keep The Grubby Finger-print Of Reality Upon The Beautiful.

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.

Perhaps There Is No Other Way Of Reaching Some Understanding Of Being Than Through Art? Writers Themselves Don't Analyze What They Do; To Analyze Would Be To Look Down While Crossing A Canyon On A Tightrope. To Say This Is Not To Mystify The Process Of Writing But To Make An Image Out Of The Intense Inner Concentration The Writer Must Have To Cross The Chasms Of The Aleatory And Make Them The Word's Own, As An Explorer Plants A Flag.

The Tension Between Standing Apart, And Being Fully Involved; That Is What Makes A Writer.

Sincerity Is Never Having An Idea Of Oneself.

If I Dreamt This, While Walking, Walking In The London Streets, The Subconscious Of Each And Every Other Life, Past And Present, Brushing Me In Passing, What Makes It Real? Writing It Down.

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.

Any Writer Of Any Worth At All Hopes To Play Only A Pocket-torch Of Light - And Rarely, Through Genius, A Sudden Flambeau - Into The Bloody Yet Beautiful Labyrinth Of Human Experience, Of Being.

Books Dont Need Batteries

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.

I Cannot Live With Someone Who Can't Live Without Me.

Your 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.

Time Is Change; We Measure Its Passage By How Much Things Alter.

Nothing Factual That I Write Or Say Will Be As Truthful As My Fiction.

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.

When I Was A Child, We Seemed To Be Living In A World Remote From The Rest Of The World. But Television Has Made A Great Difference To All Of Us.

In A Country Like South Africa, Writers Have Nuisance Value, Because Those Of Us Who Have Become Known Overseas Have Certainly Helped To Inform People About What Life Is Like There.

Rebirth. I Mean By This Simply What Happens When The Child Begins To Realise The Fact That The Black Does Not Enter Through The White’s Front Door Is Not In The Same Category As The Fact That The Dead Will Never Come Back.

It Was A Miracle; It Was All A Miracle: And One Ought To Have Known, From The Sufferings Of Saints, That Miracles Are Horror.

Keenness Of Hearing Revives When One Is Alone.

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Certainly The People Who Are Close To Me Are Happier. They Feel Freer.

Perhaps The Best Way To Write Is To Do So As If One Were Already Dead, Afraid Of No One's Reactions, Answerable To No One's Views.

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.

Freedom Of Speech

Nothing Fades So Quickly As What Is Unchanged.

The Communist Party Is Very Popular In South Africa, Especially Among The Young People. Never Having Had A Chance To Travel, And Having Suffered So Much Under Capitalism, They Still Can't Believe That The Russian People Themselves Have Rejected It.

A Desert Is A Place Without Expectation.

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Learning To Write Sent Me Falling, Falling Through The Surface Of The South African Way Of Life.

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A Truly Living Human Being Cannot Remain Neutral.

From Ernest Hemingway's Stories I Learned To Listen Within My Stories For What Went Unsaid By My Characters.

In A Democracy - Even If It Is A So-called Democracy Like Our White-?litist One - The Greatest Veneration One Can Show The Rule Of Law Is To Keep A Watch On It, And To Reserve The Right To Judge Unjust Laws And The Subversion Of The Function Of The Law By The Power Of The State. That Vigilance Is The Most Important Proof Of Respect For The Law.

All Worthwhile Writing... Comes From An Individual Vision, Privately Pursued.

Exile As A Mode Of Genius No Longer Exists; In Place Of Joyce We Have The Fragments Of Work Appearing In Index On Censorship.

A Child Understands Fear, And The Hurt And Hate It Brings.

The Caged Eagle Become A Metaphor For All Forms Of Isolation, The Ultimate In Imprisonment. A Zoo Is Prison.

Art Defies Defeat By Its Very Existence, Representing The Celebration Of Life, In Spite Of All Attempts To Degrade And Destroy It.

Sentiment Is For Those Who Don't Know What To Do Next.

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.

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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.

The Facts Are Always Less Than What Really Happened.

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Writing Is Making Sense Of Life.

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Responsibility Is What Awaits Outside The Eden Of Creativity.

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One Can't Measure How A Mood Of Confidence Comes About.

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I Have Failed At Many Things, But I Have Never Been Afraid.

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The Creative Act Is Not Pure. History Evidences It. Ideology Demands It. Society Exacts It.

Humans, The Only Self-regarding Animals, Blessed Or Cursed With This Torturing Higher Faculty, Have Always Wanted To Know Why.

Very Often We Support Change, And Then Are Swept Away By The Change. I Think That...you Just Make Your Own Response To Your Own Generation. A Response Adequate To Your Time.

Writers Themselves Don't Analyze What They Do; To Analyze Would Be To Look Down While Crossing A Canyon On A Tightrope.

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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.

Everyone Ends Up Moving Alone Towards The Self

Disaster Is Private, In Its Way, As Love Is.

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.

Once You Have Some Sort Of Reputation In The Outside World, They Will Try To Woo You. They Will Say, "won't You Come And Be On A Talk Program About Books? That's Not Political." Then They Can Say To The Outside World, "see How Free It Is, She Appears On Television. See How Free It Is." So I Refused To Have Anything Of Mine Read Or Dramatized On South African Television.

I Have Learned Since That Sometimes The Things We Want Most Are Impossible For Us. You May Long To Come Home, Yet Wander Forever.

People Give One Another Things That Can't Be Gift Wrapped.

I Couldn't Be Sufficiently Interested In Human Beings To Be A Writer If I Had Contempt For Human Beings.

You Can't Change A Regime On The Basis Of Compassion. There's Got To Be Something Harder.

I Don't Understand Writers Who Feel They Shouldn't Have To Do Any Of The Ordinary Things Of Life, Because I Think That This Is Necessary: One Has To Keep In Touch With That... The Ordinary Action Of Taking A Dress Down To The Dry Cleaner's Or Spraying Some Plants Infected With Greenfly Is A Very Sane And Good Thing To Do. It Brings One Back, So To Speak. It Also Brings The World Back.

Literature Is One Of The Few Areas Left Where Black And White Feel Some Identity Of Purpose; We All Struggle Under Censorship.

Black And White

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.

If One Will Always Have To Feel White First, And African Second, It Would Be Better Not To Stay On In Africa

Success Sometimes May Be Defined As A Disaster Put On Hold. Qualified. Has To Be.

What A Writer Does Is To Try To Make Sense Of Life. I Think That's What Writing Is, I Think That's What Painting Is. It's Seeking That Thread Of Order And Logic In The Disorder, And The Incredible Waste And Marvelous Profligate Character Of Life. What All Artists Are Trying To Do Is To Make Sense Of Life.

Mostly I'm Interviewed By White People, And Identified With White Society.

It's Impossible To Conquer All Fear And Loss By Preparation. There Are Always Sources Of Desolation That Aren't Taken Into Account Because No One Knows What They Will Be.

Perhaps The Best Definition Of Progress Would Be The Continuing Efforts Of Men And Women To Narrow The Gap Between The Convenience Of The Powers That Be And The Unwritten Charter.

Enemy Of Progress

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