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For himself, then. For his idea of the world, a world in which men do not use shovels to beat corpses into a more convenient shape for processing.

J. M. Coetzee

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J. M. Coetzee
Age: 85
Born: 1940
Born: January 1
Author
Critic
Essayist
Librettist
Linguist
Novelist
Poet
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Cape Town
South Africa
John Maxwell Coetzee
Shape
Beats
Shapes
Shovels
Idea
Processing
Use
Corpses
Ideas
Disgrace
Men
Convenient
World
Beat

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I tend to resist invitations to interpret my own fiction.
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Denunciations of the manipulativeness of advertisers can unfortunately all too easily be turned on their heads into denunciations of the gullibility of consumers. Both are forms of scapegoating, neither accomplishes anything.
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The highest type of intelligence, says Aristotle, manifests itself in an ability to see connections where no one has seen them before, that is, to think analogically.
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I don't think we are ready to die, any of us, not without being escorted.
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Just as we bemoan the passing away of the Great Novel, a great novelist is likely to emerge, perhaps even from Denmark or Switzerland, to prove us wrong.
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[Hariharan is] an outstanding writer.
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I am spoken to not in words, which come to me quaint and veiled, but in signs, in conformations of face and hands, in postures of shoulders and feet, in nuances of tune and tone, in gaps and absences whose grammar has never been recorded.
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It’s admirable, what you do, what she does, but to me animal-welfare people are a bit like Christians of a certain kind. Everyone is so cheerful and well-intentioned that after a while you itch to go off and do some raping and pillaging. Or to kick a cat.
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If it is indeed impossible - or at least very difficult - to inhabit the consciousness of an animal, then in writing about animals there is a temptation to project upon them feelings and thoughts that may belong only to our own human mind and heart.
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When all else fails, philosophize.
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The idea of writer as sage is pretty much dead today. I would certainly feel very uncomfortable in the role.
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Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?
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Unbelief is a belief.
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I must not fall asleep in the middle of my life. Out of the blankness that surrounds me I must pluck the incident after incident after incident whose little explosions keep me going.
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Was it serious? I don't know. It certainly had serious consequences.
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If I, this mortal shell, am going to die, let me at least live on through my creations.
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From one seed a whole handful: that was what it meant to say the bounty of the earth.
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The devil is everywhere under the skin of things, searching for a way into the light.
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I say that I represent this movement because my intellectual allegiances are clearly European, not African.
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When we are stirred to lament the loss of the gods, it is more than likely the gods who are doing the stirring.
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