127 Quotes by J.M. Coetzee

There is no position outside of reason where you can stand and lecture about reason and pass judgment on reason.

Den Staat kümmert nicht, ob der Bürger lebt oder stirbt. Wichtig für den Staat und sein Archiv ist, ob der Bürger am Leben oder tot ist.

How many of the ragged workingmen who pass him in the street are secret authors of works that will outlast them: roads, walls, pylons? Immortality of a kind, a limited immortality, is not so hard to achieve after all. Why then does he persist in inscribing marks on paper, in the faint hope that people not yet born will take the trouble to decipher them?

A risk to own anything : a car, a pair of shoes, a packet of cigarettes. Not enough to go around. Not enough shoes, cars, cigarettes. Too many people too few things. What there is must go into circulation, so that everyone can have a chance to be happy for a day.

Erklären heißt verzeihen, erklärt zu werden heißt Verzeihung erlangen [...]

There is a cold war on the go. America and Russia are competing for the hearts and minds of Indians, Iraquies, Nigerians; scholarships to universities are among the inducements they offer.

The crime that is latent in us we must inflict on ourselves," I say. I nod and nod, driving the message home. "Not on others," I say.

Poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a flash of response.

Nothing is worse than what we can imagine