#Quote
More Quotes by J. M. Coetzee
Poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a flash of response.
Was it serious? I don't know. It certainly had serious consequences.
Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?
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.
He continues to teach because it provides him with a livelihood; also because it teaches him humility, brings it home to him who he is in the world. The irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach learns the keenest of lessons, while those who come to learn learn nothing.
Truth is not spoken in anger. Truth is spoken, if it ever comes to be spoken, in love. The gaze of love is not deluded. It sees what is best in the beloved even when what is best in the beloved finds it hard to emerge into the light.
When all else fails, philosophize.
I am not the we of anyone.
You are going to end up as one of those sad old men who poke around in rubbish bins.
Sleep is no longer a healing bath, a recuperation of vital forces, but an oblivion, a nightly brush with annihilation.
