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"I tend to resist invitations to interpret my own fiction."
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"When one day an expedition was sent to the spatial coordinates that Voojagig had claimed for the planet they discovered only a small asteroid inhabited by a solitary old man who claimed repeatedly that nothing was true, though he was later discovered to be lying."
"That dress makes me want to do bad things to you." There was a long pause in which her sweet honeysuckle scent grew, twisting around him. Finally she spoke, her voice low. "What kinds of things?"
"Vampires did not avoid mirrors because they cast no reflection but because mirrors became so unflattering with the illusion of fuzzy focus wrenched away."
"A merry little surge of electricity piped by automatic alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awakened Rick Deckard."
"With his supernatural vision he immediately spotted Rhea sitting near the shoreline, her legs stretched out in front of her. Unfortunately she had on clothing. Not that he'd expected her to be naked. Still, a dragon could dream.... After shifting to his human form he let his camouflage drop and headed toward her. Naked. He held onto his clothes, but didn't bother to put them on as he stalked across the sand. Nudity was no big deal to shifters but normally he clothed himself in front of females in socially appropriate situations. Now, the most primal part of him wanted Rhea to see all of him. To see what he had to offer her."
"We'd read about sirens in English this fall; Greek mythology bullshit about women so beautiful, their voices so enchanting, that men did anything for them. Turned out that mythology crap was real because every time I saw her, I lost my mind."
"Oh my God, you're such a guy!" "I'm glad you noticed." The glint in his dark eyes was purely wicked."
"Caleb shifted uncomfortably as he closed the door behind him. For a moment, he'd thought she'd been naked under the sheet. But, it had been a nude-colored type of top. Didn't seem to matter, the sight had kicked his fantasies into overdrive. She tried to hide herself, but the nightlight next to her bed cast a soft amber glow around her shining right through the thin sheet, illuminating her small pert breasts perfectly even through the top. He couldn't live under the same roof as her and not go insane. He would make an announcement tomorrow. She was off-limits."
"The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means."
"If it's fiction, then it better be true."
Explore more quotes by J. M. Coetzee
"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 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."
"If there were a better, clearer, shorter way of saying what the fiction says, then why not scrap the fiction?"
"I say that I represent this movement because my intellectual allegiances are clearly European, not African."
"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."
"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."
"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?"
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