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More Quotes by J. M. Coetzee
A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us.
We must cultivate, all of us, a certain ignorance, a certain blindness, or society will not be tolerable.
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.
Where civilization entailed the corruption of barbarian virtues and the creation of dependent people, I decided, I was opposed to civilization.
Poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a flash of response.
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.
You are going to end up as one of those sad old men who poke around in rubbish bins.
I am not the we of anyone.
When all else fails, philosophize.
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.
