J.M. Coetzee

“A world without me is inconceivable.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“But then in dreams we are always children.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“The sun's touch is kind.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“Asymmetrie [macht] Menschen unglücklich.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“... but what do slow and fast matter any more?”

— J.M. Coetzee

“Truth is not spoken in anger.Truth is spoken, if it ever comes to be spoken, in love.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“There is no lie that does not have at its core some truth. One must only know how to listen.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“If only we could eat our sunsets, I say, we would all be full.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“Well, that is what you risk when you fall in love. You risk losing your dignity.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“as historias se cuentan a si mismas, no las cuenta uno”

— J.M. Coetzee

“The jackal rips out the hare's bowels, but the world rolls on.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“A good person. Not a bad resolution to make, in dark times.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“Technically he is old enough to be her father; but then, technically one can be a father at twelve.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“Fate deals you a hand, and you play the hand you are dealt. You do not whine, you do not complain. That,…

— J.M. Coetzee

“When death cuts all other links, there remains the name. Baptism: the union of a soul with a name, the name it…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Also the air: the air is full of sighs and cries. These are never lost: if you listen carefully, with a sympathetic…

— J.M. Coetzee

“It always puzzled him, when he was a child, that a woman who wrote books for a living should be so bad…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Empire as located its existence not in the smooth recurrent spinning time of the cycle of the seasons but in the jagged…

— J.M. Coetzee

“He would not mind hearing Petrus’s story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that…

— J.M. Coetzee

“He does not know what freedom is. Freedom is a word, less than a word, a noise, one of the multitude of…

— J.M. Coetzee

“And you trust yourself to divine that, from the words I use - to divine whether it comes from my heart?”

— J.M. Coetzee

“She shakes him; that is what she presumable does to other readers too. That is, presumably why, in the larger picture, she…

— J.M. Coetzee

“As you speak I swear I can hear words being selected, one after another, from the word-box you carry around with you,…

— J.M. Coetzee

“To thinking, cogitation, I oppose fullness, embodiedness, the sensation of being – not a consciousness of yourself as a kind of ghostly…

— J.M. Coetzee

“I'm sorry, my child, I just find it hard to whip up an interest in the subject. It's admirable, what you do,…

— J.M. Coetzee

“It would be best if this obscure chapter in the history of the world were terminated at once, if these ugly people…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Words are coin. Words alienate. Language is no medium for desire. Desire is rapture, not exchange. It is only by alienating the…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Your stay in the camp was merely an allegory, if you know that word. It was an allegory--speaking at the highest level--of…

— J.M. Coetzee

“I stretched out my arms and laid my palms on the earth, and, yes, the rocking persisted, the rocking of the island…

— J.M. Coetzee

“I return one last time to the places of death all around us, the places of slaughter to which, in a huge…

— J.M. Coetzee

“If there were a way of putting an end to himself by some purely mental act he would put an end to…

— J.M. Coetzee

“With the buck before me suspended in immobility, there seems to be time for all things, time even to turn my gaze…

— J.M. Coetzee

“What I call my philosophy of teaching is in fact a philosophy of learning. It comes out of Plato, modified. Before true…

— J.M. Coetzee

“You told me," I said, "that I should turn this house into a boardinghouse for students. Well, there are better things I…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Lucy was frightened, frightened near to death. Her voice choked, she could not breath, her limbs went numb. "This is not happening",…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Why?' says the boy. 'Why? Because staying alive is more important than anything else.' 'Why is staying alive more important than anything?'…

— J.M. Coetzee

“That was why, later on, he began to lose interest in photography: first when colour took over, then when it became plain…

— J.M. Coetzee

“The skull, followed by the temperament: the two hardest parts of the body.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“Craniul,si apoi temperamentul:cele mai solide parti din corpul omenesc.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“...we are on the road from no A to no B in the world...”

— J.M. Coetzee