#Quote
More Quotes by J. M. Coetzee
I’m going to end up in a hole in the ground... And so are you. So are we all.
If we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution.
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.
The secret of happiness is not doing what we like but in liking what we do.
A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us.
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.
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.
Was it serious? I don't know. It certainly had serious consequences.
Perhaps; but I am a difficult person to live with. My difficulty consists in not wanting to live with other people.
Where civilization entailed the corruption of barbarian virtues and the creation of dependent people, I decided, I was opposed to civilization.
