127 Quotes by J.M. Coetzee

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.

I truly believe I am not afraid of death. What I shrink from, I believe, is the shame of dying as stupid and befuddled as I am.

Well, cast your mind back to the books he wrote. What is the one theme that keeps recurring from book to book? It is that the woman doesn’t fall in love with the man. The man may or may not love the woman; but the woman never loves the man. What do you think that theme reflects? My guess, my highly informed guess, is that it reflects his life experience. Women didn’t fall for him—not women in their right senses. They inspected him, maybe they even tried him our. Then they moved on.

Non è stupro, non proprio, ma un atto indesiderato, profondamente indesiderato. Come se Melanie avesse deciso di lasciarsi andare, di morire dentro di sé per la durata del coito, come un coniglio quando le mascelle della volpe si chiudono sul suo collo. In modo che tutto ciò che le viene fatto avvenga, in un certo senso, lontano da lei.

The reason is that as far as I am concerned, what happened to me is a purely private matter. In another time, in another place it might be held to be a public matter. But in this place, in this time, it is not. It is my bussines, mine alone.'This place being what?''This place being South Africa

That was our first time together. Interesting, an interesting experience, but not earth-shaking. But then, I never expected it to be earth-shaking, not with him.What I was determined to avoid was emotional entanglement. A passing fling was one thing, an affair of the heart quite another.Of myself I was fairly sure. I was not about to lose my heart to a man about whom I knew next to nothing.

Is that the secret meaning of the word story, do you think: a storing place of memories?

Also the air: the air is full of sighs and cries. These are never lost: if you listen carefully, with a sympathetic ear, you can hear them echoing forever within the second sphere.

I want to find a way of speaking to fellow human beings that will be cool rather than heated, philosophical rather than polemical, that will bring enlightenment rather than seeking to divide us into the righteous and the sinners, the saved and the damned, the sheep and the goats.