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

“As during the time of kings it would have been naive to think that the king's firstborn son would be the fittest to rule, so in our time it is naive to think that the democratically elected ruler will be the fittest. The rule of succession is not a formula for identifying the best ruler, it is a formula for conferring legitimacy on someone or other and thus forestalling civil conflict.”

ThinkingHas BeensWould BeSonKingsConflictOur TimeFormulasRulersNaiveSuccessionIdentifyingLegitimacy
Author:J. M. Coetzee
Create image

“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
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

“All over the world, as governments retreat from their traditional duty to foster the common good and reconceive of themselves as mere managers of national economies, universities have been coming under pressure to turn themselves into training schools equipping young people with the skills required by a modern economy.”

PeopleWorldHas BeensGovernmentSchoolYoungTurnsCommonEconomyModernDutySkillsTrainingPressureMereUniversityTraditionalManagersRetreatCommon GoodUnder PressureNational Economy
Author:J. M. Coetzee
Create image