Marlene van Niekerk Quotes

• Nobody can be so beautiful from the outside and so hollow from inside. Not even in a third-rate novel.

  Marlene van Niekerk

  Beautiful, Novel, Rate

  Marlene Van Niekerk (2008). “The Way of the Women”, Abacus Software

  10 Copy quote

• Read non-fiction. History, biology, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology. Get a bodyguard and do fieldwork. Find your inner fish. Don't publish too soon. Not before you have read Thomas Mann in any case. Learn by copying, sentence by sentence some of the masters. Copy Coetzee's or Sebald's sentences and see what happens to your story. Consider creative non-fiction if you want to stay in South Africa. It might be the way to go. Never neglect back and hamstring exercises, otherwise you won't be able to write your novel. One needs one's buttocks to think.

  Marlene van Niekerk

  Writing, Exercise, Thinking

  7 Copy quote

• Marriage is holy and it's private.

  Marlene van Niekerk

  Holy

  Marlene Van Niekerk (2008). “The Way of the Women”, Abacus Software

  4 Copy quote

• ...a butterfly is like the soul of a person, it dries out in captivity.

  Marlene van Niekerk

  Butterfly, Soul, Captivity

  5 Copy quote

• We all have to do things in this life that we don't like.

  Marlene van Niekerk

  This Life

  Marlene Van Niekerk (2008). “The Way of the Women”, Abacus Software

  4 Copy quote

• In a state of pseudo-death you restore your substance.

  Marlene van Niekerk

  Substance, Pseudo, States

  Marlene Van Niekerk (2008). “The Way of the Women”, Abacus Software

  4 Copy quote

• Everything is important. To the smallest insect, even the mouldering tree, the deepest stone in the drift.

  Marlene van Niekerk

  Tree, Important, Stones

  Marlene Van Niekerk (2008). “The Way of the Women”, Abacus Software

  4 Copy quote

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