Nadine Gordimer Quotes

The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.

A truly living human being cannot remain neutral.

My answer is: Recognize yourself in others

Time is change; we measure its passage by how much things alter.

I have failed at many things, but I have never been afraid.

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.

People give one another things that can't be gift wrapped.

The facts are always less than what really happened.

Books dont need batteries

I cannot live with someone who can't live without me.

I have learned since that sometimes the things we want most are impossible for us. You may long to come home, yet wander forever.

Writing is making sense of life.

What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us what we are while there's another force from inside battling to make us something else.

A desert is a place without expectation.

Sentiment is for those who don't know what to do next.

Nothing fades so quickly as what is unchanged.

You can't be afraid to do good in case evil results.

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.

Newspapers are horror happening to other people.

The tension between standing apart, and being fully involved; that is what makes a writer.

Art defies defeat by its very existence, representing the celebration of life, in spite of all attempts to degrade and destroy it.

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.

Keenness of hearing revives when one is alone.

There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.

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.