J. M. Coetzee Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• If you have reservations about the system and want to change it, the democratic argument goes, do so within the system: put yourself forward as a candidate for political office, subject yourself to the scrutiny and the vote of fellow citizens. Democracy does not allow for politics outside the democratic system. In this sense, democracy is totalitarian.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Office, Political, Democracy

  "Diary of a Bad Year". Book by J. M. Coetzee, 2007.

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• Being a father ... I can't help feeling that, by comparison with being a mother, being a father is a rather abstract business.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Mother, Father, Feelings

  J. M. Coetzee (1999). “Disgrâce”, Random House (UK)

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• The mode of consciousness of nonhuman species is quite different from human consciousness.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Different, Consciousness, Humans

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• 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. First rule of restoration: follow the intention of the artist. Never try to improve on him.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Art, Trying, Restoration

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• As you see, I do not treat the creation of fiction, that to say the invention and development of fantasies,as a form of abstract thought. I dont wish to deny the uses of the intellect,but sometimes one has the intuition that the intellect by itself will lead one nowhere.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Intuition, Wish, Fiction

  Interview with David Attwell, www.dn.se. December 8, 2003.

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• When we are stirred to lament the loss of the gods, it is more than likely the gods who are doing the stirring.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Loss, Stirring, Lament

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• It gets harder all the time, Bev Shaw once said. Harder, yet easier. One gets used to things getting harder; one ceases to be surprised that what used to be hard as hard can be grows harder yet.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Easier, Used, Said

  J. M. Coetzee (1999). “Disgrâce”, Random House (UK)

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• I tend to resist invitations to interpret my own fiction.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Fiction, Invitations, My Own

  Interview with David Attwell, www.dn.se. December 8, 2003.

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• We are not by nature cruel.

  J. M. Coetzee

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• Pleasure is hard to come by, but pain is everywhere these days, I must learn to subsist on it.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Pain, Pleasure, These Days

  J. M. Coetzee (2017). “In the Heart of the Country: A Novel”, p.28, Penguin

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• Denunciations of the manipulativeness of advertisers can unfortunately all too easily be turned on their heads into denunciations of the gullibility of consumers. Both are forms of scapegoating, neither accomplishes anything.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Advertising, Form, Accomplish

  J. M. Coetzee, David Attwell (1992). “Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews”, p.137, Harvard University Press

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• As during the time of kings it would have been naive to think that the king's firstborn son would be the fittest to rule, so in our time it is naive to think that the democratically elected ruler will be the fittest. The rule of succession is not a formula for identifying the best ruler, it is a formula for conferring legitimacy on someone or other and thus forestalling civil conflict.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Kings, Son, Thinking

  "Diary of a Bad Year". Book by J. M. Coetzee, 2007.

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• All over the world, as governments retreat from their traditional duty to foster the common good and reconceive of themselves as mere managers of national economies, universities have been coming under pressure to turn themselves into training schools equipping young people with the skills required by a modern economy.

  J. M. Coetzee

  School, Government, Skills

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• From one seed a whole handful: that was what it meant to say the bounty of the earth.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Earth, Handful, Whole

  J. M. Coetzee (1984). “Life & times of Michael K”, Viking Adult

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• The barbarians come out at night.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Night, Barbarians

  Waiting for the Barbarians ch. 5 (1981)

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• Censorship is not an occupation that attracts intelligent, subtle minds. Censors can and often have been outwitted. But the game of slipping Aesopian messages past the censor is ultimately a sterile one, diverting writers from their proper task.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Intelligent, Past, Games

  J. M. Coetzee (1997). “Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship”, p.8, University of Chicago Press

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• It’s admirable, what you do, what she does, but to me animal-welfare people are a bit like Christians of a certain kind. Everyone is so cheerful and well-intentioned that after a while you itch to go off and do some raping and pillaging. Or to kick a cat.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Christian, Cat, Animal

  J. M. Coetzee (1999). “Disgrâce”, Random House (UK)

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• 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 pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Night, Cities, Pyramids

  J. M. Coetzee (1980). “Waiting for the Barbarians”, Penguin Group USA

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• The writers who have the deepest influence on one are those one reads in ones more impressionable, early life, and often it is the more youthful works of those writers that leave the deepest imprint.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Influence, Impressionable, Early Life

  Interview with David Attwell, www.dn.se. December 8, 2003.

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• 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 his heart hammers so hard that it too, in its dumb way, must know. How will they stand up to the testing, he and his heart?

  J. M. Coetzee

  Heart, Dumb, Hammers

  J. M. Coetzee (1999). “Disgrâce”, Random House (UK)

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• If it is indeed impossible - or at least very difficult - to inhabit the consciousness of an animal, then in writing about animals there is a temptation to project upon them feelings and thoughts that may belong only to our own human mind and heart.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Writing, Heart, Animal

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• 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 these glorious sunsets, I ask myself, if nature does not speak to us with tongues of fire.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Sunset, Fire, Self

  J. M. Coetzee (2017). “In the Heart of the Country: A Novel”, p.14, Penguin

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• 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 into one another to give us what looks like a common past, a shared story.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Past, Giving, Locks

  J M Coetzee (2015). “Elizabeth Costello”, p.38, Random House

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• In order to be cruel we have to close our hearts to the suffering of the other.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Heart, Order, Suffering

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• His mind has become a refuge for old thoughts, idle, indigent, with nowhere else to go. He ought to chase them out, sweep the premises clean. But he does not care to do so, or does not care enough"(72).

  J. M. Coetzee

  Mind, Doe, Care

  J M Coetzee (2015). “Disgrace”, p.72, Random House

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