Strictly speaking, my interest is not in legal rights for animals but in a change of heart towards animals. J. M. Coetzee More Quotes by J. M. Coetzee More Quotes From J. M. Coetzee If there were a better, clearer, shorter way of saying what the fiction says, then why not scrap the fiction? J. M. Coetzee why-not way fiction Censorship is not an occupation that attracts intelligent, subtle minds. Censors can and often have been outwitted. But the game of slipping Aesopian messages past the censor is ultimately a sterile one, diverting writers from their proper task. J. M. Coetzee intelligent games past If I, this mortal shell, am going to die, let me at least live on through my creations. J. M. Coetzee shells let-me creation Unimaginable perhaps; but the unimaginable is there to be imagined. J. M. Coetzee unimaginable They have no consciousness therefore. Therefore what? Therefore we are free to use them for our own ends? Therefore we are free to kill them? Why? What is so special about the form of consciousness we recognize that makes killing a bearer of it a crime while killing an animal goes unpunished?...all this discussion of consciousness and whether animals have it is just a smokescreen. At bottom we protect our own kind. Thumbs up to human babies, thumbs down to veal calves. J. M. Coetzee thumbs-down animal baby Restoration is a skilled profession. You might even call it an art in its own right, except that it is frowned on to be original. First rule of restoration: follow the intention of the artist. Never try to improve on him. J. M. Coetzee restoration trying art There seemed nothing to do but live. J. M. Coetzee Erasmus dramatizes a well-established political position: that of the fool who claims license to criticize all and sundry without reprisal, since his madness defines him as not fully a person and therefore not a political being with political desires and ambitions. The Praise of Folly, therefore sketches the possibility of a position for the critic of the scene of political rivalry, a position not simply impartial between the rivals but also, by self-definition, off the stage of rivalry altogether. J. M. Coetzee political ambition self One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation. J. M. Coetzee cities pyramids night Some years ago I wrote a book called The House on Eccles Street. To write this book I had to think my way into the existence of Marion Bloom...Marion Bloom was a figment of James Joyce's imagination. If I can think my way into the existence of a being who has never existed, then I can think my way into the existence of a bat or a chimpanzee or an oyster, any being with whom I share the substrate of life. J. M. Coetzee writing book thinking From one seed a whole handful: that was what it meant to say the bounty of the earth. J. M. Coetzee handful whole earth The spark of true poetry flashes when ideas are juxtaposed that no one has yet thought of bringing together. J. M. Coetzee sparks together ideas It is a world of words that creates a world of things. J. M. Coetzee world 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. J. M. Coetzee intuition wish fiction I say that I represent this movement because my intellectual allegiances are clearly European, not African. J. M. Coetzee movement intellectual europe 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. J. M. Coetzee men war children There is nothing more humanly beautiful than a woman's breasts. Nothing more humanly beautiful, nothing more humanly mysterious than why men should want to caress, over and over again, with paintbrush or chisel or hand, these oddly curved fatty sacs, and nothing more humanly endearing than our complicity (I mean the complicity of women) in their obsession. J. M. Coetzee beautiful men mean 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. J. M. Coetzee democracy political office What is miraculous about the past is that we have succeeded--God knows how--in making thousands and millions of individual human beings, lock well enought into one another to give us what looks like a common past, a shared story. J. M. Coetzee locks giving past 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? J. M. Coetzee desire two lying
