J.M. Coetzee

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

— 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

“The secret of happiness is not doing what we like but in liking what we do.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“Vergnügen ist Mangelware, aber an Schmerz ist heute überall ranzukommen.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“How easy it is to love a child, how hard to love what a child turns into!”

— J.M. Coetzee

“...from the oppression of such freedom who would not welcome the liberation of confinement?”

— J.M. Coetzee

“To be full of being is to live as a body-soul. One name for the experience of full being is joy.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“At what age , he wonders, did Origen castrate himself? Not the most graceful solution, but then ageing is not a graceful bussines.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“I urge you: don't cut short these thought-trains of yours. Follow them through to their end. Your thoughts and your feelings. Follow…

— J.M. Coetzee

“If he has a last thought, if there is time for a last thought, it will simply be, So this is what…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Laws are made for one purpose only (...) to hold us in check when our desires grow immoderate. As long as our…

— J.M. Coetzee

“The mistake the two of us made,’ I said, ‘was that we skimped the foreplay. I’m not blaming you, it was as…

— J.M. Coetzee

“She is no longer sure that people are always improved by what they read. Furthermore, she is not sure that writers who…

— J.M. Coetzee

“...we can pretend that the book in question is not Mr. West’s but mine, made mine by the madness of my reading.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“No, I have not sought counselling nor do I intend to seek it. I am a grown man. I am not receptive…

— J.M. Coetzee

“The reason is that as far as I am concerned, what happened to me is a purely private matter. In another time,…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Decency: the inexplicable: the ground of all ethics. Things we do not do. We do not stare when the soul leaves the…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Despite Marijana's bracing presence, he seems to be on the brink of one of his bad spells again, one of the fits…

— J.M. Coetzee

“The heart can be a mysterious organ, the heart and its movements. Dark, the Spanish call it. The dark heart, el oscuro…

— J.M. Coetzee

“...he seems to be on the brink of one of his bad spells again, one of the fits of lugubrious self-pity that…

— J.M. Coetzee

“She does not reply. She would rather hide her face, and he knows why. Because of the disgrace. Because of the shame.…

— J.M. Coetzee

“if Jesus had stooped to play politics he might have become a key man in Roman Judea, a big operator. It was…

— 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

“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

“A few days ago I heard a performance of the Sibelius fifth symphony. As the closing bars approached, I experienced exactly the…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Since I was in flight from religion, I assumed that my classmates had to be in flight from religion too, albeit in…

— J.M. Coetzee

“But most of all, as summer slanted to an end, he was learning to love idleness, idleness no longer as stretches of…

— J.M. Coetzee

“No consciousness that we would recognize as consciousness. Not awareness, as far as we can make out, of a self with a…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Anyway, said Robert, they got a big fright. After that they started dropping pellets in the water and digging latrines and spraying…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Not only may you not enter the state without certification: you are, in the eyes of the state, not dead until you…

— J.M. Coetzee

“The truth is, he tired of criticism, tired of prose measured by the yard." --Disgrace”

— J.M. Coetzee

“Moer and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth in South Africa.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“How he wishes it could be true! He is tired of shadows, of complications, of complicated people.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“This is what it leads to! This is what it leads to if you let your attention wander for a moment!”

— J.M. Coetzee

“If you are not fully in the game you are playing, however, you are not truly playing it.”

— 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

“Photographs is not the same as just name, is more living. Otherwise, why save photographs? (Marijana to Mr Rayment)”

— J.M. Coetzee

“Poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a flash of response.”

— J.M. Coetzee