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J. M. Coetzee

J. M. Coetzee Quotes

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Famous J. M. Coetzee Quotes

“His mouth opens. From inside him comes a slow stream, without breath, without interruption. It flows up through his body and out upon me; it passes through the cabin, through the wreck; washing the cliffs and shores of the island, it runs northward and southward to the ends of the earth. Soft and cold, dark and unending, it beats against my eyelids, against the skin of my face.”

EndsBodyRunningEarthFacesDarkColdBeatsMouthsFlowSkinsBreathsIslandsStreamsShoreCliffsWrecksWashingInterruptionsUnendingCabinsEyelids
Book:Foe: A Novel
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“You think you know what is just and what is not. I understand. We all think we know." I had no doubt, myself, then, that at each moment each one of us, man, woman, child, perhaps even the poor old horse turning the mill-wheel, knew what was just: all creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice. "But we live in a world of laws," I said to my poor prisoner, "a world of the second-best. There is nothing we can do about that. We are fallen creatures. All we can do is to uphold the laws, all of us, without allowing the memory of justice to fade.”

ThinkingKnowsMenWorldChildrenSaidMomentsLawCan DoMemoriesJusticePoorDoubtCreaturesHorseFallenWheelsNo DoubtAllowingPrisonerFadesMen WomenMillsYou Think You KnowSecond Best
Author:J. M. Coetzee
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“One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation.”

MindEndsNightDiesCitiesEnemyPopulationBonesDisasterPursueErasEmpiresCunningRuthlessPyramidsBarbariansAcresDesolationSubmergedBloodhounds
Book:Waiting for the Barbarians
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“But the truth, he knows, is otherwise. His pleasure in living has been snuffed out. Like a leaf on a stream, like a puffball on a breeze, he has begun to float towards his end. He sees it quite clearly, and it fills him with (the word will not go away) despair. The blood of life is leaving his body and despair is taking its place, despair that is like a gas, odourless, tasteless, without nourishment. You breathe it in, your limbs relax, you cease to care, even at the moment when the steel touches your throat.”

KnowsHas BeensEndsMomentsBodyCareLife IsPleasureBloodDespairLeavingBreatheCeaseStreamsRelaxGasGoing AwayThroatSteelLeafsBreezeLimbsFloatsNourishment
Author:J. M. Coetzee
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“But it is the knowledge of how contingent my unease is, how dependent on a baby that wails beneath my window one day and does not wail the next, that brings the worst shame to me, the greatest indifference to annihilation. I know somewhat too much; and from this knowledge, once one has been infected, there seems to be no recovering. I ought never to have taken my lantern to see what was going on in the hut by the granary. On the other hand, there was no way, once I had picked up the lantern, for me to put it down again. The knot loops in upon itself; I cannot find the end.”

KnowsWayDoeHas BeensEndsHandsSeemsNextTakenToo MuchWorstBabyOughtOne DayWindowShameIndifferenceDependentKnotsAnnihilationLoopsRecoveringHutsLanterns
Book:Waiting for the Barbarians: A Novel
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“He would not mind hearing Petrus's story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa. Stretches of English code whole sentences long have thickened, lost their articulations, their articulateness, their articulatedness. Like a dinosaur expiring and settling in the mud, the language has stiffened. Pressed into the mold of English, Petrus's story would come out arthritic, bygone"(117).”

MindLongWholeStoriesLostLanguageOne DaySouthHearingSentencesConvincedMediumsCodeSettlingSouth AfricaMudDisgraceMoldDinosaursArticulationSettling In
Book:Disgrace
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“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.”

WayWantHumansHuman BeingsEnlightenmentPhilosophicalFellowsSeekingSavedSinnerDividesSheepRighteousGoatsBeing Cool
Book:The Lives of Animals: The Lives of Animals [Princeton Classics]
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“Scapegoating worked in practice while it still had religious powers behind it. You loaded the sins of the city on to the goat’s back and drove it out, and the city was cleansed. It worked because everyone knew how to read the ritual, including the gods. Then the gods died, and all of a sudden you had to cleanse the city without divine help. Real actions were demanded instead of symbolism The censor was born, in the Roman sense. Watchfulness became the watchword: the watchfulness of all over all. Purgation was replaced by the purge.”

StillsRealHelpingActionBornReligiousSinCitiesBehindsPracticeDivineDiedIncludingRitualReplacedLoadedGoatsSymbolismWatchfulnessDivine Help
Book:Disgrâce
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“Music expresses feeling, that is to say, gives shape and habitation to feeling, not in space but in time. To the extent that music has a history that is more than a history of its formal evolution, our feelings must have a history too. Perhaps certain qualities of feeling that found expression in music can be recorded by being notated on paper, have become so remote that we can no longer inhabit them as feelings, can get a grasp of them only after long training in the history and philosophy of music, the philosophical history of music, the history of music as a history of the feeling soul.”

GivingLongSoulPhilosophyFeelingsCertainFoundSpaceQualityExpressionEvolutionShapesPaperTrainingPhilosophicalFormalHistory Of Music
Author:J. M. Coetzee
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“In a world of chance is there a better and a worse? We yield to a stranger's embrace or give ourselves to the waves; for the blink of an eyelid our vigilance relaxes; we are asleep; and when we awake, we have lost the direction of our lives. What are these blinks of an eyelid, against which the only defence is an eternal and inhuman wakefulness? Might they not be the cracks and chinks through which another voice, other voices, speak in our lives? By what right do we close our ears to them? (Susan Barton)”

WorldGivingMightLostSpeakVoiceChanceOur LivesEternalEarsEmbraceWaveStrangerAwakeRelaxLive ByCracksYieldDefenceChances AreBlinkInhumanVigilanceEyelidsChinks
Book:Foe: A Novel
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“That was our first time together. Interesting, an interesting experience, but not earth-shaking. But then, I never expected it to be earth-shaking, not with him. What I was determined to avoid was emotional entanglement. A passing fling was one thing, an affair of the heart quite another. Of myself I was fairly sure. I was not about to lose my heart to a man about whom I knew next to nothing.”

MenFirstsHeartEarthTogetherNextLosesInterestingOne ThingEmotionalMy HeartFirst TimeAffairDeterminedExpectedPassingPassingsShakingFlingTime TogetherEntanglementAffairs Of The Heart
Author:J. M. Coetzee
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“Yet what happened in fact? In the middle of the night John woke up and saw me sleeping beside him with no doubt a look of peace on my face, even of bliss, bliss is not unattainable in this world. He saw me—saw me as I was at that moment—took fright, hurriedly strapped the armour back over his heart, this time with chains and a double padlock, and stole out into the darkness.”

WorldLooksHeartMomentsFactsFacesNightSleepDarknessDoubtSawsHappenedMiddleThis WorldChainsBlissNo DoubtThat MomentFrightMiddle Of The NightUnattainableArmourPadlocks
Book:Summertime: Fiction
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“They have no consciousness therefore. Therefore what? Therefore we are free to use them for our own ends? Therefore we are free to kill them? Why? What is so special about the form of consciousness we recognize that makes killing a bearer of it a crime while killing an animal goes unpunished?...all this discussion of consciousness and whether animals have it is just a smokescreen. At bottom we protect our own kind. Thumbs up to human babies, thumbs down to veal calves.”

HumansKindEndsUseFormAnimalConsciousnessSpecialCrimeBabyProtectEthicsKillingBottomDiscussionThumbsCalvesAnimal EthicsThumbs UpThumbs Down
Author:J. M. Coetzee
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“Some years ago I wrote a book called The House on Eccles Street. To write this book I had to think my way into the existence of Marion Bloom...Marion Bloom was a figment of James Joyce's imagination. If I can think my way into the existence of a being who has never existed, then I can think my way into the existence of a bat or a chimpanzee or an oyster, any being with whom I share the substrate of life.”

IfsThinkingWayWritingYearsI CanBookHouseImaginationAnimalExistenceShareStreetsEthicsYears AgoMy WayPetBatsOystersChimpanzeesJoyceAnimal EthicsFigments
Author:J. M. Coetzee
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