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"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."
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"What becomes fascinating is the way the culture industry doesn't deny it and doesn't try to mitigate it, but tries to sell its products as a way of liberating oneself."
"They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar."
"Cultural dominance of middle-class norms prevail in middle-class schools with a teacher teaching toward those standards and with students striving to maintain those standards."
"The culture industry not so much adapts to the reactions of its customers as it counterfeits them."
Explore more quotes by J. M. Coetzee
"My response, a dubious and hesitant one, is that it has been and may continue to be, in the time that is left to me, more productive to live out the question than to try to answer it in abstract terms."
"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."
"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."
"Strictly speaking, my interest is not in legal rights for animals but in a change of heart towards animals."
"The idea of writer as sage is pretty much dead today. I would certainly feel very uncomfortable in the role."
"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."
"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."
"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?"
"As you see, I do not treat the creation of fiction, that to say the invention and development of fantasies, as a form of abstract thought. I dont wish to deny the uses of the intellect, but sometimes one has the intuition that the intellect by itself will lead one nowhere."
"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."
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