"Nothing fades so quickly as what is unchanged."

--

Source : Nadine Gordimer (1983). “Selected Stories”, Viking Press

Nadine Gordimer

“I think women get labeled a lot as being crazy. But I think men make us crazy.”
“I value in the cat the independent and almost ungrateful spirit which prevents her from attaching herself to any one, the indifference with which she passes from the salon to the housetop. When we caress her, she stretches herself and arches her back responsively; but this is because she feels an agreeable sensation, not because she takes a silly satisfaction, like the dog, in faithfully loving a thankless master. The cat lives alone, has no need of society, obeys only when she pleases, pretends to sleep that she may see more clearly, and scratches everything on which she can lay her paw.”
“Of course I think of the past and of Paris, what else is there to remember?”

Source : In a 1960 letter to Natalie Barney, as quoted in "Paris Was a Woman" by Andrea Weiss, (p. 173), 1995.
“The muse on my shoulder is very sensitive and does not abide claptrap of any kind... Only when I am totally immersed... absorbed in work... does she allow something magical to happen and I become aware of a faint heartbeat and gentle breath emanating from my brush.”
“Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness.”
“Once in a very long time you come across a book that is far, far more than the ink, the glue and the paper, a book that seeps into your blood.”
“You see what a poor sinner I am, and how unworthy to possess what was given me; for that reason it has been taken away.”
“I think as a consequence of that, there is also a fair amount of uncertainty about engaging in political activity that would be immediately suspect and seen as evidence as a sort of resurgent militancy.”

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