Quotes by J.M. Coetzee

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

An aversion came over me that we feel for all the mutilated. Why is that so, do you think? Because they put us in mind of what we would rather forget: how easily, at the stroke of a sword or a knife, wholeness and beauty are forever undone? Perhaps. ...

J.M. Coetzee

In a world of chance is there a better and a worse? We yield to a stranger's embrace or give ourselves to the waves; for the blink of an eyelid our vigilance relaxes; we are asleep; and when we awake, we have lost the direction of our lives. What are...

J.M. Coetzee

Worte entfremden. Sprache ist kein Medium für Begehren. Begehren ist Hingerissensein, nicht Austausch. Nur dadurch, dass die Sprache das Begehrte entfremdet, beherrscht sie es.

J.M. Coetzee

Auf den Stachel des Begehrens haben wir nur eine Antwort: fangen, einschließen, festhalten.

J.M. Coetzee

Alle äußeren Feinde und Widerstände ermangelnd, eingesperrt in unterdrückende Enge und Ordnung, hat der Mensch schließlich keine andere Wahl, als sich selbst zu einem Abenteuer zu machen.

J.M. Coetzee

Es ist nicht die Sprache, die den Menschen zum Menschen macht, sondern die Sprache der anderen.

J.M. Coetzee

Von allen Abenteuern ist Selbstmord das literarischste, mehr noch als Mord.

J.M. Coetzee

Deprived of human intercourse, I inevitably overvalue the imagination and expect it to make the mundane glow with an aura of self-transcendence.

J.M. Coetzee

Je mehr sich die Dinge ändern, desto mehr bleibt alles beim alten.

J.M. Coetzee

Die Sache mit dem Sündenbock funktionierte wirklich, als noch religiöse Kraft dahinterstand. Man lud dem Ziegenbock die Sünden der Stadt auf und trieb ihn hinaus, und die Stadt war gereinigt. Es funktionierte, weil alle, einschließlich der Götte...

J.M. Coetzee

There are people who have the capacity to imagine themselves as someone else, there are people who have no such capacity (when the lack is extreme, we call them psychopaths), and there are people who have the capacity but choose not to exercise it.

J.M. Coetzee

To be full of being is to live as a body-soul. One name for the experience of full being is joy.

J.M. Coetzee

I return one last time to the places of death all around us, the places of slaughter to which, in a huge communal effort, we close our hearts. Each day a fresh holocaust, yet, as far as I can see, our moral being is untouched. We do not feel tainted....

J.M. Coetzee

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 da...

J.M. Coetzee

From one seed a whole handful: that was what it meant to say .

J.M. Coetzee

Speaking the words he had been taught, directing them no longer upward but to the earth on which he knelt, he prayed: 'For what we are about to receive make us truly thankful.' ... he... felt his heart suddenly flow over with thankfulness... like a g...

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 least the idea of gardening; because once that cord ...

J.M. Coetzee

Restoration is a skilled profession. You might even call it an art in its own right, except that it is frowned on to be original. First rule of restoration: follow the intention of the artist. Never try to improve on him.

J.M. Coetzee

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

J.M. Coetzee

Well, that is what you risk when you fall in love. You risk losing your dignity.

J.M. Coetzee