242 Quotes by J. M. Coetzee

The devil is everywhere under the skin of things, searching for a way into the light.

The masters of information have forgotten about poetry, where words may have a meaning quite different from what the lexicon says, where the metaphoric spark is always one jump ahead of the decoding function, where another, unforeseen reading is always possible.

Being a father ... I can't help feeling that, by comparison with being a mother, being a father is a rather abstract business.

A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us.

Perhaps we invented the gods so that we could put the blame on them. They gave us permission to eat flesh. They gave us permission to play with unclean things. It's not our fault, it's theirs. We're just their children.

I know somewhat too much; and from this knowledge, once one has been infected, there seems to be no recovering.

In order to be cruel we have to close our hearts to the suffering of the other.

Words are coin. Words alienate. Language is no medium for desire. Desire is rapture, not exchange.

We are not by nature cruel.