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More Quotes by J. M. Coetzee
I’m going to end up in a hole in the ground... And so are you. So are we all.
Where civilization entailed the corruption of barbarian virtues and the creation of dependent people, I decided, I was opposed to civilization.
Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?
We must cultivate, all of us, a certain ignorance, a certain blindness, or society will not be tolerable.
Poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a flash of response.
I want to find a way of speaking to fellow human beings that will be cool rather than heated, philosophical rather than polemical, that will bring enlightenment rather than seeking to divide us into the righteous and the sinners, the saved and the damned, the sheep and the goats.
When all else fails, philosophize.
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. It sees what is best in the beloved even when what is best in the beloved finds it hard to emerge into the light.
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 to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul.
A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us.
