J.M. Coetzee

“Is this love - this easy generosity, this sense of being understood at last, of not having to pretend?”

— J.M. Coetzee

“...So that someone might want to put you in a book...So that you may be worth putting in a book...Live like a…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Deprived of human intercourse, I inevitably overvalue the imagination and expect it to make the mundane glow with an aura of self-transcendence.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“What more is required than a kind of stupid, insensitive doggedness, as lover, as writer, together with a readiness to fail and…

— J.M. Coetzee

“All that I want now is to live out my life in ease in a familiar world, to die in my own…

— J.M. Coetzee

“I truly believe I am not afraid of death. What I shrink from, I believe, is the shame of dying as stupid…

— J.M. Coetzee

“It occurs to me that we crush insects beneath our feet, miracles of creation too, beetles, worms, cockroaches, ants, in their various…

— J.M. Coetzee

“There is no position outside of reason where you can stand and lecture about reason and pass judgment on reason.”

— 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

“A risk to own anything : a car, a pair of shoes, a packet of cigarettes. Not enough to go around. Not…

— J.M. Coetzee

“How many of the ragged workingmen who pass him in the street are secret authors of works that will outlast them: roads,…

— J.M. Coetzee

“That is the theory; hold to the theory and to the comforts of theory. Not human evil, just a vast circulatory system,…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Space is space,life is life,everywhere is the same. But as for me, sustained by the toil of others, lacking civilized vices with…

— J.M. Coetzee

“I have lived through an eventful year, yet understand no more of it than a babe in arms. Of all the people…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Sigue dedicándose a la enseñanza [...] porque así aprende la virtud de la humildad, porque así comprende con toda claridad cuál es…

— J.M. Coetzee

“We are accustomed to believe that our world was created by God speaking the Word; but I ask, may it not rather…

— J.M. Coetzee

“An aversion came over me that we feel for all the mutilated. Why is that so, do you think? Because they put…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Well, cast your mind back to the books he wrote. What is the one theme that keeps recurring from book to book?…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Never is he going to be his old self again. Never is he going to have his old resilience. Whatever inside him…

— J.M. Coetzee

“In a sudden and soundless eruption, as if he has fallen into a waking dream, a stream of images pours down, images…

— J.M. Coetzee

“The question is not, are we sorry? The question is, what lesson have we learned? The question is what are we going…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Jokes, secrets, complicities; a glance here, a word there: that is their way of being together, of being apart.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“He tends to trust pictures more than he trusts words. Not because pictures cannot lie but because, once they leave the darkroom,…

— J.M. Coetzee

“In a minute, in an hour, it will be too late; whatever is happening to her will be set in stone, will…

— J.M. Coetzee

“...that somewhere from amidst the welter of sound there will dart up, like a bird, a single authentic note of immortal longing.”

— J.M. Coetzee

“When did a sheep last die of old age? Sheep do not own themselves, do not own their lives. They exist to…

— J.M. Coetzee

“The humanities the core of the university. She may be an outsider, but if she were asked to name the core of…

— J.M. Coetzee

“He would never want to diminish that event, that blow. It was nothing less than a calamity. It has shrunk his world,…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Do you remember Vlek, who was such a good sheepdog that she and Jakob alone could drive a whole flock past you…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Curious that a man as selfish as he should be offering himself to the service of dead dogs. There must be other,…

— J.M. Coetzee

“I remember asking John, after Dusklands, what new project he had on the go. His answer was vague. 'There is always something…

— J.M. Coetzee

“We cannot shrink in disgust from our neighbour's touch because his hands, that are clean now, were once dirty. We must cultivate,…

— J.M. Coetzee

“The planting is reserved for those who come after us and have the foresight to bring seed. I only clear the ground…

— J.M. Coetzee

“All creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice. "But we live in a world of laws," I…

— J.M. Coetzee

“There are people who have the capacity to imagine themselves as someone else, there are people who have no such capacity (when…

— J.M. Coetzee

“The path that leads through Latin and alebra is not the path to material success. But it may suggest much more: that…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Why should our rulers, normally phlegmatic men, react with sudden hysteria to the pinpricks of terrorism when for decades they were able…

— J.M. Coetzee

“In the act of writing he experiences, today, an exceptional sensual pleasure -- in the feel of the pen, snug in the…

— J.M. Coetzee

“He sits with the pen in his hand, holding himself back from a descent into representations that have no place in the…

— J.M. Coetzee

“Yet is it not the heart but the members of play that elevate us above the beasts: the fingers with which we…

— J.M. Coetzee