#Quote
More Quotes by J. M. Coetzee
Where civilization entailed the corruption of barbarian virtues and the creation of dependent people, I decided, I was opposed to civilization.
Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt.
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.
Was it serious? I don't know. It certainly had serious consequences.
We must cultivate, all of us, a certain ignorance, a certain blindness, or society will not be tolerable.
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.
The secret of happiness is not doing what we like but in liking what we do.
When all else fails, philosophize.
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.
Poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a flash of response.
