Nadine Gordimer Quotes

If one is the kind of creature I am and wants to do the kind of writing I want to do, an undisturbed bourgeois existence with no distractions seems in order. A single meeting outside the family upsets one's whole inner web, makes one start off on two-days' thinking and weighing, destroys a delicate balance etc. etc. ... I now have enough friends to last me a lifetime and that is enough. I am going to close the doors and hibernate at least for a couple of years. I am frightfully depressed about my work. It seems to me perfectly mediocre.

I think if I was ever really going to be more serious about writing I'd have to try and find some way to do it with other people. I do find the silence kind of eerie.

I write pretty fast, probably faster than most people. But I might think about something for six hours, then write it in 20 minutes. So did I write for six hours and 20 minutes, or just 20 minutes? I used to write absolutely every day, except for days when I had to travel or something.

I just want to sit in my room and write books.

Although I've made notes for things and even written synopses sitting in trains or on park benches, for the complete composition of things I need absolute solitude, preferably an empty house.

The one happiness is to shut one's door upon a little room, with a table before one, and to create; to create life in that isolation from life.

Writing in my closet, it's a small space but it made a lot of room in my mind.

Lena Dunham or Miranda July, those people are sort of thinking about their work in a slightly different way than I do, where their whole body is a seed of what they're creating. I can't imagine watching Miranda's movies with anybody else playing her role, she's so integral. But for me, it feels more like every story is really individual. If I thought of something else, or thought it should be my body representing it, I'd fold my body into it. But most of the time I'm writing to get something out of my body.

What we [writers] do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite. It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy.

I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on. But routinely when I finish a book, I think, "What will I do? Where will I get an idea?" And a kind of low-level panic sets in. And then eventually something happens. I don't know. If I knew how it happened I would repeat the process, but I don't know - something just occurs to me.

When I'm writing new material, I never have any trouble coming up with ideas.

The creative act always requires a stepping back. It's called the incubation period. The incubation period - one of the four phases of creativity - is when you're not consciously thinking of a problem, and you're letting it marinate. So this is why you hear time and again, people saying they had that "Eureka" moment in the bath, like Archimedes, or in the shower, or while going for a walk or in a coffeehouse.

Philip Larkin didn't write for several years before his life ended. And when he was asked why he didn't write, he said the muse deserted him. And when I read that, it really had a profound effect upon me, sort of scared me. So that's why I think I have no right to assume that some thought is going to come... But I think, in my imagination, if it is it, there will probably be something else I'm interested in.

I think it's really important to not talk about how you're going to release something until you've finished it. People are like, "What are we going to make? What are we going to do with it?" and it's just like, "I don't know, we're just making music. Then we'll talk." You can't always write something you're happy with; you can't force it.

People say you make your best work when in despair, but I think happiness is a good place to write from.

I've done lots of songs for film soundtracks and things like that-stuff I'm not ashamed of, but that doesn't represent my legacy with the Pretenders...I think domesticity certainly doesn't make it easy to write, you know, because you've got a lot of distractions and I think a writer is always looking for distractions.

I think everything has its place. So if the ideas or the fluidity isn't coming in writing, maybe it's related to ingestions.

I love to be alone, I find it necessary, but I don't know if that's just how I am or if it's an essential ingredient to making, to art. Certainly on a practical level it is. But on the other hand, I think it's a myth that the creative inspiration is locked up inside the person and just needs a quiet space and the right "serious" brooding moment to get released.

A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites them to think something else.

I don't think that writer's block exists really. I think that when you're trying to do something prematurely, it just won't come. Certain subjects just need time, as I've learned over and over again. You've got to wait before you write about them.

I don't have a style. I wouldn't say I have a style as a writer, either. I know people have said "This is what he does," but when I'm writing, I don't think about that. I don't think about a style.

I did actually sit down with a blank sheet of paper once. I think the phone rang and that was the end of my literary career.

Yes, I get dry spells. Sometimes I can't turn out a thing for three months. When one of those spells comes on I quit trying to work and go out and see something of life. You can't write a story that's got any life in it by sitting at a writing table and thinking. You've got to get out into the streets, into the crowds, talk with people, and feel the rush and throb of real life-that's the stimulant for a story writer.

People who do a job that claims to be creative have to be alone to recharge their batteries. You can’t live 24 hours a day in the spotlight and remain creative. For people like me, solitude is a victory.

I think when you write songs, you write about people... People are the source of my material. And London is a wonderful place to be for people. So, the next time you're sitting in a park somewhere, and you see someone like me looking at you, don't phone the police. I'm just writing