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"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."
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"The condition you're in at this moment is the product of your previous thoughts, to change your condition, change your thoughts."
Personal Development
"Life becomes difficult when out of sync with your heart-felt desires."
"The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency."
"To get matured, you must have an education in the School of Solitude!"
"Happiness is not defined by how much money you possess."
"If you want people to enter your world, you don't need to invite them; just keep your door open and keep your thoughts plain!"
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."
"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."
"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."
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