Despair ... is like a gas, odourless, tasteless, without nourishment. You breathe it in, your limbs relax, you cease to care, even at the moment when the steel touches your throat. — J. M. Coetzee Copy Share Image
Everyone seems to see bleakness and despair in my books. I don't read them that way. I see myself as writing comic books, books about ordinary people trying to live ordinary, dull, happy lives while the world is falling to… — J. M. Coetzee Copy Share Image
“For I am no orator. What would I have said if they had let me go on? That it is worse to beat a… — J. M. Coetzee Copy Share Image
To me, a philosopher who says that the distinction between human and nonhuman depends on whether you have a white or a black skin,… — J. M. Coetzee Copy Share Image
The spark of true poetry flashes when ideas are juxtaposed that no one has yet thought of bringing together. — J. M. Coetzee Copy Share Image
“But with this woman it is as if there is no interior, only a surface across which I hunt back and forth seeking entry.… — J. M. Coetzee Copy Share Image
You think you know what is just and what is not. I understand. We all think we know." I had no doubt, myself, then,… — J. M. Coetzee Copy Share Image
The highest type of intelligence, says Aristotle, manifests itself in an ability to see connections where no one has seen them before, that is,… — J. M. Coetzee Copy Share Image
Elizabeth, Lady C, claims to be writing at the limits of language. Would it not be insulting to her if I were diligently to… — J. M. Coetzee Copy Share Image
Denunciations of the manipulativeness of advertisers can unfortunately all too easily be turned on their heads into denunciations of the gullibility of consumers. Both… — J. M. Coetzee Copy Share Image
Deprived of human intercourse, I inevitably overvalue the imagination and expect it to make the mundane glow with an aura of self-transcendence. Yet why… — J. M. Coetzee Copy Share Image
What is miraculous about the past is that we have succeeded--God knows how--in making thousands and millions of individual human beings, lock well enought… — J. M. Coetzee Copy Share Image
...the program of scientific experimentation that leads you to conclude that animals are imbeciles is profoundly anthropocentric. It values being able to find your… — J. M. Coetzee Copy Share Image
