J. M. Coetzee Quotes & Sayings

“In order to be cruel we have to close our hearts to the suffering of the other.”

“As you see, I do not treat the creation of fiction, that to say the invention and development of fantasies, as a form of abstract thought. I don't wish to deny the uses of the intellect, but sometimes one has the intuition that the intellect by itself will lead one nowhere.”

“The most important of all rights is the right to life, and I cannot foresee a day when domesticated animals will be granted that right in law.”

“My response, a dubious and hesitant one, is that it has been and may continue to be, in the time that is left to me, more productive to live out the question than to try to answer it in abstract terms.”

“If there were a better, clearer, shorter way of saying what the fiction says, then why not scrap the fiction?”

“Strictly speaking, my interest is not in legal rights for animals but in a change of heart towards animals.”

“The end of confession is to tell the truth to and for oneself.”

“Elizabeth, Lady C, claims to be writing at the limits of language. Would it not be insulting to her if I were diligently to follow after her, explaining what she means but is not smart enough to say?”

“I read a great deal as a child. A lot of children go through a phase of reading in a literally voracious way. It is their primary imaginative activity. Maybe that's an experience which is not so common any more with the presence of television in every home.”

“Lebanon, Israel, Ireland, South Africa - wherever there is a bleeding sore on the body of the world, the same hard-eyed narrow-minded fanatics are busy, indifferent to life, in love with death.”