176 Quotes by Nadine Gordimer

But the transport of a novel, the false awareness of being within another time,place and life that was the pleasure of reading, for her, was not possible. Shewas in another time, place, consciousness; it pressed in upon her and filled her as someone’s breath fills a balloon’s shape. She was already not what she was. No fiction could compete with what she was finding she did not know, could not have imagined or discovered through imagination.

The solitude of writing is also quite frightening. It's quite close to madness, one just disappears for a day and loses touch.

To discover the exact location of a 'thing' is a simple matter of factual research. To discover the exact location of a person: where to locate the self?

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.

Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area.

Success sometimes may be defined as a disaster put on hold. Qualified. Has to be.

How did I find out? I was deceiving him.

Books don't need batteries.

Death is really the mystery of life, isn't it?