A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us.

— J.M. Coetzee

A good person. Not a bad resolution to make, in dark times.

— J.M. Coetzee

All of which makes up a story I do not choose to tell. I choose not to tell it because to no one, not even to you, do I own proof that I am a substantial being with a substantial history in the world.

— J.M. Coetzee

Also, the air: the air is full of sighs and cries. These are never lost: if you listen carefully, with a sympathetic ear, you can hear them echoing forever within the second sphere.

— J.M. Coetzee

A risk to own anything: a car, a pair of shoes, a packet of cigarettes. Not enough to go around, not enough cars, shoes, cigarettes. Too many people, too few things. What there is must go into circulation, so that everyone can have a chance to be happy for a day. That is the theory; hold to the theory and to the comforts of theory. Not human evil, just a vast circulatory system, to whose workings pity and terror are irrelevant. That is how one must see life in this country: in its schematic aspect. Otherwise, one could go mad. Cars, shoes; women too. There must be some niche in the system for women and what happens to them.

— J.M. Coetzee

A risk to own anything : a car, a pair of shoes, a packet of cigarettes. Not enough to go around. Not enough shoes, cars, cigarettes. Too many people too few things. What there is must go into circulation, so that everyone can have a chance to be happy for a day.

— J.M. Coetzee

Asymmetric [yacht] Mensches unglücklich.

— J.M. Coetzee

As you speak I swear I can hear words being selected, one after another, from the word-box you carry around with you, and slotted into place. That is not how a true native speak, one who is born into a language.’‘How does a native speak?’‘From the heart. Words well up within, and he sings them, sings along with them. So to speak.

— J.M. Coetzee

Because a woman's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is a part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it.

— J.M. Coetzee

Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise, what is life for?

— J.M. Coetzee