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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.

-Nadine Gordimer

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Once You Have Some

Nadine Gordimer

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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.

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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.

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.

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

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Keenness Of Hearing Revives When One Is Alone.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

A Desert Is A Place Without Expectation.

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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.

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.

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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.

About The Joys And The Courage, I Really Don't Know What Other People Think. I Just Know That I've Never Left Africa. I've Lived There All My Life. And One Of The Wonderful Things, In Spite Of All The Terrible Things That Happen In South Africa, Is The Way People Continue To Keep Their Dignity.

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

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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. If Something Happens Where I Live, You See It Tomorrow Or Perhaps Even At The Same Time It Is Happening There. It's Not "one World" In The Sense That Conflicts Are Resolved In The World. But We Are More One World In That We Know What Is Going On And Are Psychologically Influenced By What Goes On Around Us.

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

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

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