Best J M Coetzee Quotes
- In order to be cruel we have to close our hearts to the suffering of the other. Close
- Restoration is a skilled profession. You might even call it an art in its own right, except that it is frowned on to be original.… Art
- I say that I represent this movement because my intellectual allegiances are clearly European, not African. African
- My response, a dubious and hesitant one, is that it has been and may continue to be, in the time that is left to me,… Abstract
- If it is indeed impossible - or at least very difficult - to inhabit the consciousness of an animal, then in writing about animals there… Animal
- If there were a better, clearer, shorter way of saying what the fiction says, then why not scrap the fiction? Better
- In its conception the literature prize belongs to days when a writer could still be thought of as, by virtue of his or her occupation,… Affiliation
- As for September 11, let us not too easily grant the Americans possession of that date on the calendar. Like May 1 or July 14… American
- Strictly speaking, my interest is not in legal rights for animals but in a change of heart towards animals. Animal
- I see no marks of Wordsworths style of writing or style of thinking in my own work, yet Wordsworth is a constant presence when I… Beings
- I tend to resist invitations to interpret my own fiction. Fiction
- His mouth opens. From inside him comes a slow stream, without breath, without interruption. It flows up through his body and out upon me; it… Beats
- he knows too much about himself to subject her to a morning after, when he will be cold, surly, impatient to be alone. Alone
- But he cannot see a connection between the end of yearning and the end of poetry. Is that what growing up amounts to: growing out… All
- 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… All
- No, Paul, I couldn't care less if you tell me made-up stories. Our lies reveal as much about us as our truths.' (Said to Paul… Angel
- She gives him what he can only call a sweet smile. 'So you are determined to go on being bad. Mad, bad, and dangerous to… Ask
- Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for? Become Major
- Truth is not spoken in anger. Truth is spoken, if it ever comes to be spoken, in love. The gaze of love is not deluded.… Anger
- One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it… Acres
- To the last we have learned nothing. In all of us, deep down, there seems to be something granite and unteachable. No one truly believes,… All
- The masters of information have forgotten about poetry, where words may have a meaning quite different from what the lexicon says, where the metaphoric spark… Ahead
- But the truth, he knows, is otherwise. His pleasure in living has been snuffed out. Like a leaf on a stream, like a puffball on… Away Despair
- His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origin of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need… Air
- So it has come, the day of testing. Without warning, without fanfare, it is here, and he is in the middle of it. In his… Chest