South African literature is a literature in bondage. It is a less-than-fully-human literature. It is exactly the kind of literature you would expect people to write from prison. — 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. Is this how her torturers felt hunting their secret, whatever they thought it was? For the first time I feel a dry pity for them: how natural a mistake to believe that you can burn or… — J. M. Coetzee Copy Share
You think you know what is just and what is not. I understand. We all think we know." I had no doubt, myself, then, that at each moment each one of us, man, woman, child, perhaps even the poor old horse turning the mill-wheel, knew what was just: all creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of… — J. M. Coetzee Copy Share
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
