#Quote
More Quotes by J. M. Coetzee
Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?
We must cultivate, all of us, a certain ignorance, a certain blindness, or society will not be tolerable.
You are going to end up as one of those sad old men who poke around in rubbish bins.
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.
Sleep is no longer a healing bath, a recuperation of vital forces, but an oblivion, a nightly brush with annihilation.
Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt.
Where civilization entailed the corruption of barbarian virtues and the creation of dependent people, I decided, I was opposed to civilization.
A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us.
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.
The secret of happiness is not doing what we like but in liking what we do.
