176 Quotes by Nadine Gordimer

in writing, sex doesn't matter; it's the writing that matters.

I don't understand writers who feel they shouldn't have to do any of the ordinary things of life, because I think that this is necessary: one has to keep in touch with that... The ordinary action of taking a dress down to the dry cleaner's or spraying some plants infected with greenfly is a very sane and good thing to do. It brings one back, so to speak. It also brings the world back.

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.

It is not the conscious changes made in their lives by men and women-a new job, a new town, a divorce-which really shape them...but a long slow mutation of emotion, hidden, all-penetrative...

Learning to write sent me falling, falling through the surface of the South African way of life.

Newspapers are horror happening to other people.

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.

Literature is one of the few areas left where black and white feel some identity of purpose; we all struggle under censorship.

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.