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"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."
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Exlpore more Thought quotes
"As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself."
"I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in."
"A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thoughts and aspirations."
"An outree explanation, violating all our preconceptions, would never pass for a true account of a novelty. We should scratch round industriously till we found something less excentric."
"I mostly liked the thought which was said in the film Person of Interest "If you think that chess is the life, you must lose", incrediable thought. With this though you can reach a position when you can say all people are different or probably further. But the question is how much further can you reach?"
"Don't think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed."
"Thought is actually something that is dead, it is not a living thing. If 'oneself' gets engrossed in what is dead, then it will become alive."
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."
"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."
"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?"
"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."
"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."
"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."
"If there were a better, clearer, shorter way of saying what the fiction says, then why not scrap the fiction?"
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