242 Quotes by J. M. Coetzee

Vielleicht ist es so, dass nur das, was nicht ausgesprochen worden ist, durchlebt werden muss.

Sleep is no longer a healing bath, a recuperation of vital forces, but an oblivion, a nightly brush with annihilation.

I should never have allowed the gates of the town to be opened to people who assert that there are higher considerations than those of decency".

Ama aptallık ettim, iyi vakit geçirtmek yerine onu kasvete boğdum. Gerçekten de dünyanın şarkıcılara ve dansçılara kalması gerek! Gereksiz acılar, aylakça melankoli, boş pişmanlıklar! -Barbarları Beklerken

..., según mi experiencia la poesía te habla y te llega a primera vista o no te llegará nunca. Hay un destello de revelación y un destello reflejo de respuesta. Es como el rayo. Como enamorarse.

They have no consciousness therefore. Therefore what? Therefore we are free to use them for our own ends? Therefore we are free to kill them? Why? What is so special about the form of consciousness we recognize that makes killing a bearer of it a crime while killing an animal goes unpunished?...all this discussion of consciousness and whether animals have it is just a smokescreen. At bottom we protect our own kind. Thumbs up to human babies, thumbs down to veal calves.

Lebanon, Israel, Ireland, South Africa - wherever there is a bleeding sore on the body of the world, the same hard-eyed narrow-minded fanatics are busy, indifferent to life, in love with death.

Our lies reveal as much about us as our truths

There is nothing more inimical to writing than the spirit of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism abhors the play of signs, the endlessness of writing. Fundamentalism means nothing more or less than going back to an origin and staying there. It stands for one founding book and, thereafter, no more books.