Nadine Gordimer Quotes

Everything is ephemeral, both that which remembers and that which is remembered.

Today's news, which may be yesterday's anyway, will be eclipsed tomorrow.

Anything that endures over time sacrifices its ability to make an impression.

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.

The temporal quality of all things was being firmly impressed upon me.

The more change, the more it's the same thing.

Nothing is forever in the Theatre. Whatever it is, it's here, it flares up, burns hot and then its gone.

The world changes too fast. You take your eyes off something that's always been there, and the next minute it's just a memory.

How those fires burned that are no longer, how the weather worsened, how the shadow of the seagull vanished without a trace. Was it the end of a season, the end of a life? Was it so long ago it seems it might never have been? What is it in us that lives in the past and longs for the future, or lives in the future and longs for the past? (from "No Words Can Describe It")

We write our names in the sand: and then the waves roll in and wash them away.

Time bears away all things.

While all is new, all is beautiful. That is a well-known song. Yes, and the next day the air changes into another one equally well known.

Only the ephemeral is of lasting value.

One must console oneself with the thought that time has a sieve through which most of these important things run into the ocean of oblivion and what remains after this selection is often still trite and bad.

Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come Again in this identical guise.

There's certainly nothing lasting and definite about the theater.

The results would have stayed on the watch face until the batteries died. But trying to make time stand still this way would have been a mistake. It is just as important to erase times eventually as to save them at first.

Everything changes permantly. How boring if it wouldn't.

The things that have come into being change continually. The man with a good memory remembers nothing because he forgets nothing.

You cannot step into the same river twice.

But where are the snows of yester year?

It is useless to contend with the irresistible power of Time, which goes on continually creating by a process of constant destruction.

Yesterday's just a memory, tomorrow is never what it's supposed to be.

Time doesn't go. Time stays. We go.

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.