J. M. Coetzee

“The writers who have the deepest influence on one are those one reads in ones more impressionable, early life, and often it is the more youthful works of those writers that leave the deepest...”

“Lebanon, Israel, Ireland, South Africa - wherever there is a bleeding sore on the body of the world, the same hard-eyed narrow-minded fanatics are busy, indifferent to life, in love with dea...”

“Islamic fundamentalism in its activist manifestation is bad news. Religious fundamentalism in general is bad news. We know about religious fundamentalism in South Africa. Calvinist fundament...”

“The mode of consciousness of nonhuman species is quite different from human consciousness.”

“There are works of literature whose influence is strong but indirect because it is mediated through the whole of the culture rather than immediately through imitation. Wordsworth is the case...”

“In becoming a citizen, one undertakes certain duties and responsibilities. One of the more intangible of those duties and responsibilities is no matter what one's birth and background, to ac...”

“I tend to resist invitations to interpret my own fiction.”

“Strictly speaking, my interest is not in legal rights for animals but in a change of heart towards animals.”

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

“If there were a better, clearer, shorter way of saying what the fiction says, then why not scrap the fiction?”

“I read a great deal as a child. A lot of children go through a phase of reading in a literally voracious way. It is their primary imaginative activity. Maybe that's an experience which is no...”

“I see no marks of Wordsworths style of writing or style of thinking in my own work, yet Wordsworth is a constant presence when I write about human beings and their relations to the natural w...”