J. M. Coetzee Quotes - Page 5

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Animals Children Consciousness Corruption Creation Desire Doubt

In a world of chance is there a better and a worse? We yield to a stranger's embrace or give ourselves to the waves; for the blink of an eyelid our vigilance relaxes; we are asleep; and when we awake, we have lost the direction of our lives. What are these blinks of an eyelid, against which the only defence is an eternal and inhuman wakefulness? Might they not be the cracks and chinks through which another voice, other voices, speak in our lives? By what right do we close our ears to them? (Susan Barton)

J. M. Coetzee

Yield, Voice, Giving

J. M. Coetzee (2017). “Foe: A Novel”, p.25, Penguin

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Just as we bemoan the passing away of the Great Novel, a great novelist is likely to emerge, perhaps even from Denmark or Switzerland, to prove us wrong.

J. M. Coetzee

Passing Away, Switzerland, Novelists

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Once I lived in time as a fish in water, breathing it, drinking it, sustained by it. Now I kill time and time kills me.

J. M. Coetzee

Time, Drinking, Breathing

J. M. Coetzee, David Attwell (1992). “Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews”, p.209, Harvard University Press

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The end of confession is to tell the truth to and for oneself.

J. M. Coetzee

Telling The Truth, Confession, Ends

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I say that I represent this movement because my intellectual allegiances are clearly European, not African.

J. M. Coetzee

Europe, Intellectual, Movement

"An exclusive interview with J M Coetzee". Interview with David Attwell, www.dn.se. December 8, 2003.

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Scapegoating worked in practice while it still had religious powers behind it. You loaded the sins of the city on to the goat’s back and drove it out, and the city was cleansed. It worked because everyone knew how to read the ritual, including the gods. Then the gods died, and all of a sudden you had to cleanse the city without divine help. Real actions were demanded instead of symbolism The censor was born, in the Roman sense. Watchfulness became the watchword: the watchfulness of all over all. Purgation was replaced by the purge.

J. M. Coetzee

Religious, Real, Practice

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

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It seemed to me that all things were possible on the island, all tyrannies and cruelties, though in small; and if, in despite of what was possible, we lived at peace with another, surely this was proof that certain laws unknown to us held sway, or else that we had been following the promptings of our hearts all this time, and our hearts had not betrayed us.

J. M. Coetzee

Sympathy, Heart, Islands

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Yet what happened in fact? In the middle of the night John woke up and saw me sleeping beside him with no doubt a look of peace on my face, even of bliss, bliss is not unattainable in this world. He saw me—saw me as I was at that moment—took fright, hurriedly strapped the armour back over his heart, this time with chains and a double padlock, and stole out into the darkness.

J. M. Coetzee

Heart, Sleep, Night

J. M. Coetzee (2009). “Summertime: Fiction”, Viking Press

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Speaking the words he had been taught, directing them no longer upward but to the earth on which he knelt, he prayed: 'For what we are about to receive make us truly thankful.' ... he... felt his heart suddenly flow over with thankfulness... like a gush of warm water... All that remains is to live here quietly for the rest of my life, eating food that my own labour has made the earth to yield. All that remains is to be a tender of the soil.

J. M. Coetzee

Heart, Garden, Yield

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Was it serious? I don't know. It certainly had serious consequences.

J. M. Coetzee

Serious, Knows, Consequence

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

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He even knew the reason why: because enough men had gone off to war saying the time for gardening was when the war was over; whereas there must be men to stay behind and keep gardening alive, or at least the idea of gardening; because once that cord was broken, the earth would grow hard and forget her children. That was why.

J. M. Coetzee

Children, War, Men

J. M. Coetzee (1983). “Life & Times of Michael K.: A Novel”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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You think you know what is just and what is not. I understand. We all think we know." I had no doubt, myself, then, that at each moment each one of us, man, woman, child, perhaps even the poor old horse turning the mill-wheel, knew what was just: all creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice. "But we live in a world of laws," I said to my poor prisoner, "a world of the second-best. There is nothing we can do about that. We are fallen creatures. All we can do is to uphold the laws, all of us, without allowing the memory of justice to fade.

J. M. Coetzee

Horse, Children, Memories

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he knows too much about himself to subject her to a morning after, when he will be cold, surly, impatient to be alone.

J. M. Coetzee

Morning, Too Much, Cold

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

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There are works of literature whose influence is strong but indirect because it is mediated through the whole of the culture rather than immediately through imitation. Wordsworth is the case that comes to mind.

J. M. Coetzee

Strong, Mind, Culture

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

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The most important of all rights is the right to life, and I cannot foresee a day when domesticated animals will be granted that right in law.

J. M. Coetzee

Animal, Rights, Law

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Artists no longer starve in garrets. Some people may think this is not wholly a good thing, that being an artist has become too comfortable, at least in the West. I'm not sure I agree. It's a mark of civilization to encourage the arts and the life of the mind.

J. M. Coetzee

Art, Thinking, Civilization

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Music expresses feeling, that is to say, gives shape and habitation to feeling, not in space but in time. To the extent that music has a history that is more than a history of its formal evolution, our feelings must have a history too. Perhaps certain qualities of feeling that found expression in music can be recorded by being notated on paper, have become so remote that we can no longer inhabit them as feelings, can get a grasp of them only after long training in the history and philosophy of music, the philosophical history of music, the history of music as a history of the feeling soul.

J. M. Coetzee

Philosophy, Philosophical, Expression

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And anyway, I suspect he secretly liked it when a woman was cold and distant

J. M. Coetzee

Cold, Suspects

J. M. Coetzee (2009). “Summertime: Fiction”, Viking Press

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You are going to end up as one of those sad old men who poke around in rubbish bins.” “I’m going to end up in a hole in the ground... And so are you. So are we all.

J. M. Coetzee

Men, Rubbish, Holes

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

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It is not, then, in the content or substance of folly that its difference from truth lies, but in where it comes from. It comes not from 'the wise man's mouth' but from the mouth of the subject assumed not to know and speak the truth.

J. M. Coetzee

Wise, Lying, Men

J. M. Coetzee (1997). “Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship”, p.94, University of Chicago Press

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His mouth opens. From inside him comes a slow stream, without breath, without interruption. It flows up through his body and out upon me; it passes through the cabin, through the wreck; washing the cliffs and shores of the island, it runs northward and southward to the ends of the earth. Soft and cold, dark and unending, it beats against my eyelids, against the skin of my face.

J. M. Coetzee

Running, Dark, Islands

J. M. Coetzee (2017). “Foe: A Novel”, p.149, Penguin

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He would not mind hearing Petrus's story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa. Stretches of English code whole sentences long have thickened, lost their articulations, their articulateness, their articulatedness. Like a dinosaur expiring and settling in the mud, the language has stiffened. Pressed into the mold of English, Petrus's story would come out arthritic, bygone"(117).

J. M. Coetzee

Long, Mind, One Day

J M Coetzee (2015). “Disgrace”, p.117, Random House

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But it is the knowledge of how contingent my unease is, how dependent on a baby that wails beneath my window one day and does not wail the next, that brings the worst shame to me, the greatest indifference to annihilation. I know somewhat too much; and from this knowledge, once one has been infected, there seems to be no recovering. I ought never to have taken my lantern to see what was going on in the hut by the granary. On the other hand, there was no way, once I had picked up the lantern, for me to put it down again. The knot loops in upon itself; I cannot find the end.

J. M. Coetzee

Baby, Taken, Hands

J. M. Coetzee (2017). “Waiting for the Barbarians: A Novel”, p.19, Penguin

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For himself, then. For his idea of the world, a world in which men do not use shovels to beat corpses into a more convenient shape for processing.

J. M. Coetzee

Men, Ideas, Use

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There is first of all the problem of the opening, namely, how to get us from where we are, which is, as yet, nowhere, to the far bank. It is a simple bridging problem, a problem of knocking together a bridge. People solve such problems every day. They solve them, and having solved them push on.

J. M. Coetzee

Simple, Bridges, People

J. M. Coetzee (1997). “What is realism?”, Bennington College Bookstore

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Born: February 9, 1940
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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