Nadine Gordimer Quotes

None of my books has been ever in my head; after they're finished, they go. It's like being a sort of medium; you just grab it when it's there then just release it when it's time to go. There's a lot of instinct, not planning.

Sometimes I think that I understand my movies after I make them. Really. I go very often off of instinct.

Painting is almost like a sport. It's like this action thing. When I do it, I'm really not thinking. The paintings are like a diary that I might not want to read again.

I don't make judgments about my own work, and I don't analyze it; I just let it happen. That applies to everything I've done.

I wanted to create a body of work that I was proud of. It's come from honesty and integrity, without forcing anything from myself, the ideas had to come instinctively and organically. Whether that translates to people in that way, it's kind of out of my hands now.

How many of you are creative? I don't know, but for me, when you make a bunch of things over time and then you keep them... you forget. I look through my sketchbooks and I'm an audience for myself.

I'm not going to be like, "I gotta get this idea out of my head." It's like, "OK, here's a clean slate, and I've got all these paints, and all these brushes, and this is what I'm going to do with it." It reveals itself, and you take a step back and say, "What's happening here? Where are we going? What does this mean? Do I need to break it open? Does it need to just be what it is? Should it end now?"

I don't understand what I do, I just know that it's great.

The first thing that distinguishes a writer is that he is most alive when alone.

One writes not by will but by surrender.

I work rather blindly. I have a theory that seems to work with me that some of the best things you ever do sort of come through you. You don't know where you get the impetus and response to what's before your eyes.

I try not to get analytical in the writing process. I try to just kind of keep the flow from my brain to my hand as far as the pen is concerned and go with the moment and go with my guts.

Part of filmmaking is always a guessing game, and part of it is always a game of trust.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

I don't know why I paint what I paint. I think it comes out - it's kind of my subconscious or something.

Occasionally if I look back at something I've written I'll find one of those that I don't understand, but that's a bad thing - the unconscious has dealt me a bad hand.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

I distrust thought. The interior life is highly overrated. I don't like the wispy and the vague... or inductive logic in any kind of writing. I'm impatient with writers who make too much sense. The better things that I've done have come to me by instinct.

I write songs, and I sing them. I never formulated a plan; I can't tell anyone else how to do this. But it feels right, so I just kind of enjoy it and get on with it.

Anybody who dedicates himself to exploring the human condition, there's always a detached eye that's watching. In any situation, a little part of me is observing it, to see if there are any raw materials to create something else later.

All stories come from the subconscious - which is why it doesn't make sense to over-plan.

I don't outline; I listen to a kind of whisper inside the material.

I like to do things sort of intuitively, I think.

Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.