More Quotes by J. M. Coetzee
You are going to end up as one of those sad old men who poke around in rubbish bins.
If we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution.
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.
Poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a flash of response.
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 damned, the sheep and the goats.
Perhaps; but I am a difficult person to live with. My difficulty consists in not wanting to live with other people.
We must cultivate, all of us, a certain ignorance, a certain blindness, or society will not be tolerable.
A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us.
The secret of happiness is not doing what we like but in liking what we do.
