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"That has always seemed to me one of the stranger aspects of literary fame: you prove your competence as a writer and an inventor of stories, and then people clamour for you to make speeches and tell them what you think about the world."
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"We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started."
"I believe that in every country the people themselves are more peaceably and liberally inclined than their governments."
"A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me, I'm afraid of widths."
"People generally quarrel because they cannot argue."
"How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?"
"I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one."
"I am confident that, in the end, common sense and justice will prevail. I'm an optimist, brought up on the belief that if you wait to the end of the story, you get to see the good people live happily ever after."
Explore more quotes by J. M. Coetzee
"I say that I represent this movement because my intellectual allegiances are clearly European, not African."
"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?"
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The idea of writer as sage is pretty much dead today. I would certainly feel very uncomfortable in the role."
"If there were a better, clearer, shorter way of saying what the fiction says, then why not scrap the fiction?"
"I see no marks of Wordsworths style of writing or style of thinking in my own work, yet Wordsworth is a constant presence when I write about human beings and their relations to the natural world."
"Strictly speaking, my interest is not in legal rights for animals but in a change of heart towards animals."
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