Quotes from JM Coetzee

The idea of writer as sage is pretty much dead today. I would certainly feel very uncomfortable in the role.

Because a women's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is a part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it.

There is nothing more inimical to writing than the spirit of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism abhors the play of signs, the endlessness of writing. Fundamentalism means nothing more or less than going back to an origin and staying there. It stands for one founding book and, thereafter, no more books.

Without desire how is it possible to make a story?

There is no shame in being the object of a crime. You did not choose to be the object.

Belief may be no more, in the end, than a source of energy, like a battery which one clips into an idea to make it run. As happens when one writes: believing whatever has to be believed in order to get the job done.

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

The secret of happiness is not doing what we like but in liking what we do.

If we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution.

Truth is not spoken in anger. Truth is spoken, if it ever comes to be spoken, in love. The gaze of love is not deluded. It sees what is best in the beloved even when what is best in the beloved finds it hard to emerge into the light.

We must cultivate, all of us, a certain ignorance, a certain blindness, or society will not be tolerable.

He continues to teach because it provides him with a livelihood; also because it teaches him humility, brings it home to him who he is in the world. The irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach learns the keenest of lessons, while those who come to learn learn nothing.