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
lasts communist optimist
Communists are the last optimists.
peace tree serenity
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.
character keys stories
From Ernest Hemingway's stories, I learned to listen within my stories for what went unsaid by my characters.
jealous writing privacy
I shall never write an autobiography, I'm much too jealous of my privacy for that.
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.
blessed animal self
Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.
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.
civilization people wells
Well, you know, in the fundamentalist milieu of the Afrikaners, there was a sense that they were a chosen people, that they were bringing civilization to the blacks.
contempt humans ifs
I couldn't be sufficiently interested in human beings to be a writer if I had contempt for human beings.
mood
One can't measure how a mood of confidence comes about.