Quotessence
Home / Authors / J. M. Coetzee
J. M. Coetzee

J. M. Coetzee Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

AllWorldIfsKnowsAnimalEndsHumansDoePeopleThinkingDisgraceHeartHas BeensMayMenMindWayChildrenEarthFirstsHard

Famous J. M. Coetzee Quotes

“If you have reservations about the system and want to change it, the democratic argument goes, do so within the system: put yourself forward as a candidate for political office, subject yourself to the scrutiny and the vote of fellow citizens. Democracy does not allow for politics outside the democratic system. In this sense, democracy is totalitarian.”

IfsWantDoePoliticalDemocracySubjectsCitizensOfficeArgumentVoteFellowsDemocraticCandidatesScrutinyReservations
Author:J. M. Coetzee
Create image

“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
Create image

“Anyone who says that life matters less to an animal than it does to us has not held in his hands an animal fighting for its life. The whole of the being of the animal is thrown into that fight, without reserve. When you say that the fight lacks a dimension of intellectual or imaginative horror, I agree. It is not the mode of being animals to have an intellectual horror: their whole being is in the living flesh...I urge you to walk, flank to flank, beside the beast that is prodded down the chute to his executioner.”

DoeMatterWholeHandsFightingWalksAnimalHorrorIntellectualEthicsAgreeFleshBeastDimensionsThrownUrgesReservesImaginativeExecutionersAnimal Ethics
Book:The Lives of Animals: The Lives of Animals [Princeton Classics]
Create image