# J. M. Coetzee - Quotes: 125 - Author page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee ## Books - [Boyhood](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/boyhood.md) — 7 quotes - [Diary of a Bad Year](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/diary-of-a-bad-year.md) — 6 quotes - [Disgrace](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/disgrace.md) — 22 quotes - [Elizabeth Costello](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/elizabeth-costello.md) — 9 quotes - [Foe](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/foe.md) — 39 quotes - [In the Heart of the Country](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/in-the-heart-of-the-country.md) — 4 quotes - [Slow Man](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/slow-man.md) — 5 quotes - [Waiting for the Barbarians](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/waiting-for-the-barbarians.md) — 20 quotes - [Youth](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/youth.md) — 13 quotes ## Recently added quotes > Our lies reveal as much about us as our truths. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/slow-man/our-lies-reveal.md) > The typical reaction of liberal intellectuals is to seize on the contradiction here: How can something be both wrong and right, or at least both wrong and OK, at the same time? What liberal intellectuals fail to see is that this so-called contradiction expresses the quintessence of the Machiavellian and therefore the modern, a quintessence that has been thoroughly absorbed by the man in the street. The world is ruled by necessity, says the man in the street, not by some abstract moral code. We have to do what we have to do. > > If you wish to counter the man in the street, it cannot be by appeal to moral principles, much less by demanding that people should run their lives in such a way that there are no contradictions between what they say and what they do. Ordinary life is full of contradictions; ordinary people are used to accommodating them. Rather, you must attack the metaphysical, supra-empirical status of necessità and show that to be fraudulent. p. 17 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/diary-of-a-bad-year/the-typical-reaction.md) > But truth is not spoken in anger. Truth is spoken, if it ever comes to be spoken, in love. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/slow-man/but-truth-is-not.md) > Can desire grow out of admiration, or are the two quite distinct species? What would it be like to lie side by side, naked, breast to breast, with a woman one principally admires? [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/slow-man/can-desire-grow.md) > Why does love, even such love as he claims to practise, need the spectacle of beauty to bring it to life? What, in the abstract, do shapely legs have to do with love, or for that matter with desire? Or is that just the nature of nature, about which one does not ask questions? [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/slow-man/why-does-love.md) > Someone should put together a ballet under the title Guantanamo, Guantanamo! A corps of prisoners, their ankles shackled together, thick felt mittens on their hands, muffs over their ears, black hoods over their heads, do the dances of the persecuted and the desperate. Around them, guards in olive green uniforms prance with demonic energy and glee, cattle prods and billy-clubs at the ready. They touch the prisoners with the prods and the prisoners leap; they wrestle prisoners to the ground and shove the clubs up their anuses and the prisoners go into spasms. In a corner, a man on stilts in a Donald Rumsfeld mask alternately writes at his lectern and dances ecstatic little jigs. > > One day it will be done, though not by me. It may even be a hit in London and Berlin and New York. It will have absolutely no effect on the people it targets, who could not care less what ballet audiences think of them. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/diary-of-a-bad-year/someone-should-put.md) > If you have reservations about the system and want to change it, the democratic argument goes, do so within the system: put yourself forward as a candidate for political office, subject yourself to the scrutiny and the vote of fellow citizens. Democracy does not allow for politics outside the democratic system. In this sense, democracy is totalitarian. p. 15 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/diary-of-a-bad-year/if-you-have.md) > As during the time of kings it would have been naive to think that the king’s firstborn son would be the fittest to rule, so in our time it is naive to think that the democratically elected ruler will be the fittest. The rule of succession is not a formula for identifying the best ruler, it is a formula for conferring legitimacy on someone or other and thus forestalling civil conflict. p. 14 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/diary-of-a-bad-year/as-during-the.md) > Paul here is unhappy because unhappiness is second nature to him but more particularly because he has not the faintest idea of how to bring about his heart's desire. And I am unhappy because nothing is happening. Four people in four corners, moping, like tramps in Beckett, and myself in the middle, wasting time, being wasted by time. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/slow-man/paul-here-is-unhappy.md) > Machiavelli says that if as a ruler you accept that your every action must pass moral scrutiny, you will without fail be defeated by an opponent who submits to no such moral test. To hold on to power, you have not only to master the crafts of deception and treachery but to be prepared to use them where necessary. p. 17 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/diary-of-a-bad-year/machiavelli-says-that.md) > The modern state appeals to morality, to religion, and to natural law as the ideological foundation of its existence. At the same time it is prepared to infringe any or all of these in the interest of self-preservation. p. 17 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/diary-of-a-bad-year/the-modern-state.md) > She inhabits her characters as a woman does, not a man. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/elizabeth-costello/she-inhabits-her.md)