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"In order to be cruel we have to close our hearts to the suffering of the other."
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"Cruelty is one fashion statement we can all do without."

"Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn't really hurt."

"So that the smile was not so much an attitude to be taken to life as the nature of the cruelty of life, a cruelty we cannot even choose to avoid, since it is human existence."
Explore more quotes by J. M. Coetzee

"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."

"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."

"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 idea of writer as sage is pretty much dead today. I would certainly feel very uncomfortable in the role."
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