Famous JM Coetzee Quotes

  • It always puzzled him, when he was a child, that a woman who wrote books for a living should be so bad at telling bedtime stories. – JM Coetzee

    It always puzzled him, when he was a child, that a woman who wrote books for a living should be so bad at telling bedtime stories.– JM Coetzee

  • Without desire how is it possible to make a story? – JM Coetzee

    Without desire how is it possible to make a story?– JM Coetzee

  • Sleep is no longer a healing bath, a recuperation of vital forces, but an oblivion, a nightly brush with annihilation. – JM Coetzee

    Sleep is no longer a healing bath, a recuperation of vital forces, but an oblivion, a nightly brush with annihilation.– JM Coetzee

  • There is no position outside of reason where you can stand and lecture about reason and pass judgment on reason. – JM Coetzee

    There is no position outside of reason where you can stand and lecture about reason and pass judgment on reason.– JM Coetzee

  • A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us. – JM Coetzee

    A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us.– JM Coetzee

  • Is that the secret meaning of the word story, do you think: a storing place of memories? – JM Coetzee

    Is that the secret meaning of the word story, do you think: a storing place of memories?– JM Coetzee

  • To be full of being is to live as a body-soul. One name for the experience of full being is joy. – JM Coetzee

    To be full of being is to live as a body-soul. One name for the experience of full being is joy.– JM Coetzee

  • Deprived of human intercourse, I inevitably overvalue the imagination and expect it to make the mundane glow with an aura of self-transcendence. – JM Coetzee

    Deprived of human intercourse, I inevitably overvalue the imagination and expect it to make the mundane glow with an aura of self-transcendence.– JM Coetzee

  • (I)f we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution. – JM Coetzee

    (I)f we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution.– JM Coetzee

  • Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That’s what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for? – JM Coetzee

    Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That’s what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?– JM Coetzee