{"author":"J.M. Coetzee","author_id":"J.M.+Coetzee","total_quotes":61,"quotes":[{"text":"I do believe that people can only be in love with one landscape in their lifetime. One can appreciate and enjoy many geographies, but there is only one that one feels in one’s bones.","author":"J.M. Coetzee","tags":["identity","nostalgia"],"id":3895,"author_id":"J.M.+Coetzee"},{"text":"The masters of information have forgotten about poetry, where words may have a meaning quite different from what the lexicon says, where the metaphoric spark is always one jump ahead of the decoding function, where another, unforeseen reading is always possible.","author":"J.M. Coetzee","tags":["poetry"],"id":10698,"author_id":"J.M.+Coetzee"},{"text":"Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?","author":"J.M. Coetzee","tags":["courage","heroism","live-life"],"id":18209,"author_id":"J.M.+Coetzee"},{"text":"His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origin of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul.","author":"J.M. Coetzee","tags":["emptiness","language","song","soul","speech"],"id":45860,"author_id":"J.M.+Coetzee"},{"text":"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.","author":"J.M. Coetzee","tags":["english","language","native"],"id":57850,"author_id":"J.M.+Coetzee"},{"text":"He even knew the reason why: because enough men had gone off to war saying the time for gardening was when the war was over; whereas there must be men to stay behind and keep gardening alive, or at least the idea of gardening; because once that cord was broken, the earth would grow hard and forget her children. That was why.","author":"J.M. Coetzee","tags":["earth","gardening","war"],"id":65117,"author_id":"J.M.+Coetzee"},{"text":"Not only may you not enter the state without certification: you are, in the eyes of the state, not dead until you are certified dead; and you can be certified dead only by an officer who himself (herself) holds state certification. The state pursues the certification of death with extraordinary thoroughness—witness the dispatch of a host of forensic scientists and bureaucrats to scrutinize and photograph and prod and poke the mountain of human corpses left behind by the great tsunami of December 2004 in order to establish their individual identities. No expense is spared to ensure that the census of subjects shall be complete and accurate.Whether the citizen lives or dies is not a concern of the state. What matters to the state and its records is whether the citizen is alive or dead.","author":"J.M. Coetzee","tags":["politics"],"id":66393,"author_id":"J.M.+Coetzee"},{"text":"Why?' says the boy.'Why? Because staying alive is more important than anything else.''Why is staying alive more important than anything?'He is about to answer, about to produce the correct, patient, educative words, when something wells up inside him. Anger? No. Irritation? No: more than that. Despair? Perhaps: despair in one of its minor forms. Why? Because he would like to believe he is guiding the child through the maze of the moral life when, correctly, patiently, he answers his unceasing 'Why' questions. But where is there any evidence that the child absorbs his guidance or even hears what he says?He stops where he is on the busy sidewalk. Inés and the boy stop too, and stare at him in puzzlement. 'Think of it in this way,' he says. 'We are tramping through the desert, you and Inés and I. You tell me you are thirsty and I offer you a glass of water. Instead of drinking the water you pour it out in the sand. You say you thirst for answers: 'Why this? Why that?' I, because I am patient, because I love you, offer you an answer each time, which you pour away in the sand. Today, at last, I am tired of offering you water. 'Why is staying alive important?' If life does not seem important to you, so be it.'Inés raises a hand to her mouth in dismay. As for the boy, his face sets in a frown. 'You say you love me but you don't love me,' he says. 'You just pretend.","author":"J.M. Coetzee","tags":["despair","education","patience"],"id":67009,"author_id":"J.M.+Coetzee"},{"text":"If Jesus had stooped to play politics he might have become a key man in Roman Judea, a big operator. It was because he was indifferent to politics, and made his indifference clear, that he was liquidated. How to live one's life outside politics, and one's death too: that was the example he set for his followers.","author":"J.M. Coetzee","tags":["politics"],"id":70131,"author_id":"J.M.+Coetzee"},{"text":"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.","author":"J.M. Coetzee","tags":["freedom","story"],"id":70214,"author_id":"J.M.+Coetzee"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":61,"pages":7,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}