242 Quotes by J. M. Coetzee

I have never seen anything like it: two little discs of glass suspended in front of his eyes in loops of wire. Is he blind?

I remember asking John, after Dusklands, what new project he had on the go. His answer was vague. ‘There is always something or the other I am working on’, he said. ‘If I yield to the seduction of not working, what would I do with myself? What would there be to live for? I would have to shoot myself.

In the act of writing he experiences, today, an exceptional sensual pleasure – in the feel of the pen, snug in the crook of his thumb, but even more in the feel of his hand being tugged back lightly from its course across the page by the strict, unvarying shape of the letters, the discipline of the alphabet.

Vengeance is like a fire. The more it devours, the hungrier it gets.

The mistake the two of us made,’ I said, ’was that we skimped the foreplay. I’m not blaming you, it was as much my fault as yours, but it was a fault nonetheless.

Our lies reveal as much about us as our truths.

The sun is setting, the sky is a tumult of oranges, reds and violets.

Two names on the page, his and hers, side by side. Two in a bed, lovers no longer but foes.

Like much else nowadays I leave it feeling stupid, like a man who lost his way long ago but presses on along a road that may lead nowhere.