J. M. Coetzee Quotes

Everyone seems to see bleakness and despair in my books. I don't read them that way. I see myself as writing comic books, books about ordinary people trying to live ordinary, dull, happy lives while the world is falling to pieces around them.

J. M. Coetzee

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Quotes to Explore

• I wanted my children to have the same exposure to the water I had. My strongest memories of Northeast Harbor are going in a small Whaler with my dad, looking for osprey.

  

  Parker Stevenson
  • Children
  • Small
  • Dad

• I was perhaps about 10 years old when a local farmer rang us up to say he had found a young badger and would we take it in. So we did; it was a female called Bessy and she lived in the boiler room. She was extremely intelligent, had a very low opinion of cats but loved the dogs. She was pretty well trained; she went in the car.

  

  Owen Paterson
  • Up
  • She
  • Pretty

• If there's a strange way to do something, I would certainly like to know about it. I feel that I owe that to my public.

  

  Walter Becker Steely Dan
  • Know
  • Feel
  • Strange

• Men move through a much different process before commitment than women do.

  

  Warren Farrell
  • Men
  • Different
  • Women

• Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.

  

  F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Life
  • World
  • Wonder

• I never come away from a film thinking I nailed it.

  

  Sally Hawkins
  • Thinking
  • Never
  • Film

• I grew up in Germany for a little while, and all my German friends said that Seattle, weather and energy-wise, is a lot like West Germany. It's true.

  

  Daniel Breaker
  • Up
  • Friends
  • True

• Being the vice-captain, you see a lot of things on the field. You have to try and help the captain as much as you can and lead by example on the field. Small things like getting a run-out or taking a catch makes the other boys try and lift their standards. So yes, I do have an important role, even if I'm not captain.

  

  Yuvraj Singh
  • Important
  • Help
  • Small

• Our fresh technical resources have furthered the disintegration of solid masses of masonry into slender piers, with consequent far-reaching economies in bulk, space, weight, and haulage.

  

  Walter Gropius
  • Space
  • Resources
  • Weight

• Dementia is, after all, a symptom of organic brain damage. It is a condition, a disorder of the central nervous system, brought about in my case by a viral assault on brain tissue. When the assault wiped out certain intellectual processes, it also affected emotional processes.

  

  Floyd Skloot
  • Brain
  • Emotional
  • Intellectual

• People think I'm just an old Luddite, but that's untrue. I buy every new gizmo as it comes out, play with it until I understand how it works, and then give it away.

  

  Felix Dennis
  • People
  • Think
  • Understand

• I have to make sure that I make good choices and that if I put my name on it, it's a high-quality endeavor and that I have time to be a human being.

  

  Nate Silver
  • Time
  • Good
  • High

• My number one goal is to love, support and be there for my son.

  

  Farrah Fawcett
  • Love
  • Support
  • Son

• You are the only you. That means you don't lose roles to anybody else. There's no competition, so they either want you or they don't want you, and it's not that they wanted someone else over you.

  

  Rachel Brosnahan
  • Want
  • Competition
  • Lose

• For the Negro, Andrew Johnson did less than nothing when once he realized that the chief beneficiary of labor and economic reform in the South would be freedmen. His inability to picture Negroes as men made him oppose efforts to give them land; oppose national efforts to educate them; and above all things, oppose their rights to vote.

  

  W. E. B. Du Bois
  • Men
  • Picture
  • Vote

• There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.

  

  Daniel Berrigan
  • War
  • Death
  • Peace

• I don't think that my work is very moralistic - at least, I try to avoid that. I grew up with that sermonising tendency, and I don't think visual work operates like that.

  

  Kara Walker
  • Up
  • Work
  • Think

• We must have the time to create strict rules so that property is not sold by Communist managers for a low price. They often get payments under the table to sell to the first bidder. This does not build public support for a market economy.

  

  Vaclav Klaus
  • Time
  • Support
  • Rules

• I wanted to draw and do costumes. I was prepared to train for that, but I needed something to do on my time off from high school, so I called an agent without telling anyone and started working with her.

  

  Clemence Poesy
  • Time
  • School
  • High

• I think it's very important to emphasize that there are many, many different educational institutions in what we call higher education, and they educate an enormous diversity of students. I think all of those institutions have to define particular roles for themselves; they can't do everything at once.

  

  Derek Bok
  • Different
  • Important
  • Education

• I use music and mantras that transform my thoughts from the negative to the positive. If I'm thinking the world is a horrible place, I can transform my life by saying, 'I won't give up', 'I won't worry my life away' and 'I won't hesitate no more', using these lyrics to change my experience. That is, I believe, what makes me seem like a positive person.

  

  Jason Mraz
  • Life
  • Up
  • World

• I'm trying everything. But voice work is the best thing you ever imagined. It's not about how you look, and you can go to work in your PJs.

  

  Sabrina Carpenter
  • Work
  • Trying
  • Best

• I'm happy to say that I'm a lesbian in the world. I know there are people who don't want to be called women comedians, but I think it gives a path to the fact that we live in extremely patriarchal times.

  

  Kate Clinton
  • People
  • World
  • Live

• Everyone seems to see bleakness and despair in my books. I don't read them that way. I see myself as writing comic books, books about ordinary people trying to live ordinary, dull, happy lives while the world is falling to pieces around them.

  

  J. M. Coetzee
  • People
  • World
  • Writing