Author details
All J. M. Coetzee Quotes
Strictly speaking, my interest is not in legal rights for animals but in a change of heart towards animals.
J. M. Coetzee
61% of people like this quote
That has always seemed to me one of the stranger aspects of literary fame: you prove your competence as a writer and an inventor of stories, and then people clamour for you to make speeches and tell them what you think about the world.
J. M. Coetzee
60% of people like this quote
I tend to resist invitations to interpret my own fiction.
J. M. Coetzee
58% of people like this quote
I say that I represent this movement because my intellectual allegiances are clearly European, not African.
J. M. Coetzee
55% of people like this quote
As for September 11, let us not too easily grant the Americans possession of that date on the calendar. Like May 1 or July 14 or December 25, September 11 may seem full of significance to some people, while to other people it is just another day.
J. M. Coetzee
55% of people like this quote
If there were a better, clearer, shorter way of saying what the fiction says, then why not scrap the fiction?
J. M. Coetzee
53% of people like this quote
There are works of literature whose influence is strong but indirect because it is mediated through the whole of the culture rather than immediately through imitation. Wordsworth is the case that comes to mind.
J. M. Coetzee
53% of people like this quote
The mode of consciousness of nonhuman species is quite different from human consciousness.
J. M. Coetzee
52% of people like this quote
In its conception the literature prize belongs to days when a writer could still be thought of as, by virtue of his or her occupation, a sage, someone with no institutional affiliations who could offer an authoritative word on our times as well as on our moral life.
J. M. Coetzee
52% of people like this quote
The writers who have the deepest influence on one are those one reads in ones more impressionable, early life, and often it is the more youthful works of those writers that leave the deepest imprint.
J. M. Coetzee
51% of people like this quote
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.
J. M. Coetzee
50% of people like this quote
In order to be cruel we have to close our hearts to the suffering of the other.
J. M. Coetzee
50% of people like this quote
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?
J. M. Coetzee
49% of people like this quote
The idea of writer as sage is pretty much dead today. I would certainly feel very uncomfortable in the role.
J. M. Coetzee
49% of people like this quote
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