“ (I)f we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution. J.M. Coetzee
“ He is not, he hopes, a sentimentalist. He tries not to sentimentalize the animals he kills, or to sentimentalize Bev Shaw. He avoids saying to her 'I don't know how you do it,' in order not to have to… J.M. Coetzee
“ You have never asked for anything, yet you have become an albatross around my neck. Your bony arms are knotted behind my head, I walk bowed under the weight of you. J.M. Coetzee
“ Music expresses feeling, that is to say, gives shape and habitation to feeling, not in space but in time. To the extent that music has a history that is more than a history of its formal evolution, ou… J.M. Coetzee
“ It seemed to me that all things were possible on the island, all tyrannies and cruelties, though in small; and if, in despite of what was possible, we lived at peace with another, surely this was proo… J.M. Coetzee
“ Therapy is to make one happy. What is the point of that? Happy people are not interesting. Better to accept the burden of unhappiness and try to turn it into something worthwhile, poetry or music or p… J.M. Coetzee
“ His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origin of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul. J.M. Coetzee
“ Because a woman's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is a part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it. J.M. Coetzee
“ 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 w… J.M. Coetzee
“ Not only may you not enter the state without certification: you are, in the eyes of the state, not dead until you are certified dead; and you can be certified dead only by an officer who himself (hers… J.M. Coetzee
“ What would yield the greater benefit to mankind: if I spent the afternoon taking stock in my dispensary, or if I went to the beach and took off my clothes and lay in my underpants absorbing the benign… J.M. Coetzee
“ He even knew the reason why: because enough men had gone off to war saying the time for gardening was when the war was over; whereas there must be men to stay behind and keep gardening alive, or at le… J.M. Coetzee
“ In a minute, in an hour, it will be too late; whatever is happening to her will be set in stone, will belong to the past. But now is not too late. Now he must do something J.M. Coetzee
“ In a sudden and soundless eruption, as if he has fallen into a waking dream, a stream of images pours down, images of women he has known on two continents, some from so far away in time that he barely… J.M. Coetzee
“ Why?' says the boy.'Why? Because staying alive is more important than anything else.''Why is staying alive more important than anything?'He is about to answer, about to produce the correct, patient, e… J.M. Coetzee
“ 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 f… J.M. Coetzee
“ 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. 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. J.M. Coetzee
“ 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 circula… J.M. Coetzee
