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
birthday people giving
People give one another things that can't be gift wrapped.
essentials faculty androgynous
when it comes to their essential faculty as writers, all writers are androgynous beings.
white firsts would-be
If one will always have to feel white first, and African second, it would be better not to stay on in Africa
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.
survival different wagers
In various and different circumstances certain objects and individuals are going to turn out to be vital. The wager of survival cannot, by its nature, reveal which, in advance of events.
tension standing-apart standing
The tension between standing apart, and being fully involved; that is what makes a writer.
genius censorship fragments
Exile as a mode of genius no longer exists; in place of Joyce we have the fragments of work appearing in Index on Censorship.
lasts communist optimist
Communists are the last optimists.
white people
Mostly I'm interviewed by white people, and identified with white society.
love-is tragedy way
Disaster is private, in its way, as love is.
writing views way
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.
creativity creative demand
The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Ideology demands it. Society exacts it.
literature may censorship
Censorship may have to do with literature; but literature has nothing whatever to do with censorship.
writing character thinking
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.