J. M. Coetzee quote: "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 accept the historical past of the new country as one's own."

Lebanon, Israel, Ireland, South Africa - wherever there is a bleeding sore on the body of the world,...
J. M. COETZEE

In its conception the literature prize belongs to days when a writer could still be thought of as, b...
J. M. COETZEE

As for September 11, let us not too easily grant the Americans possession of that date on the calend...
J. M. COETZEE

The most important of all rights is the right to life, and I cannot foresee a day when domesticated ...
J. M. COETZEE

My response, a dubious and hesitant one, is that it has been and may continue to be, in the time tha...
J. M. COETZEE

The writers who have the deepest influence on one are those one reads in ones more impressionable, e...
J. M. COETZEE

I tend to resist invitations to interpret my own fiction.
J. M. COETZEE

Strictly speaking, my interest is not in legal rights for animals but in a change of heart towards a...
J. M. COETZEE

The mode of consciousness of nonhuman species is quite different from human consciousness.
J. M. COETZEE

I see no marks of Wordsworths style of writing or style of thinking in my own work, yet Wordsworth i...
J. M. COETZEE

There are works of literature whose influence is strong but indirect because it is mediated through ...
J. M. COETZEE

I read a great deal as a child. A lot of children go through a phase of reading in a literally vorac...
J. M. COETZEE

If there were a better, clearer, shorter way of saying what the fiction says, then why not scrap the...
J. M. COETZEE

Das Bild vom Wirtschaftsgeschehen als einem Wettlauf oder Wettkampf ist in seinen Details etwas vers...
J.M. COETZEE

I don't know what you do about sex and I don't want to know, but this is not the way to go about it....
J.M. COETZEE

Ana Magdalena nods. For an instant the blue eyes fix on his. 'She sees straight through me', he thin...
J.M. COETZEE

I stretched out my arms and laid my palms on the earth, and, yes, the rocking persisted, the rocking...
J.M. COETZEE

Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherw...
J.M. COETZEE

(I)f we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retri...
J.M. COETZEE

His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origin of speech lie in song, and the origins of...
J.M. COETZEE

In a sudden and soundless eruption, as if he has fallen into a waking dream, a stream of images pour...
J.M. COETZEE

His mind has become a refuge for old thoughts, idle, indigent, with nowhere else to go. He ought to ...
J.M. COETZEE

Calf-deep in the soothing water I indulge myself in the wishful vision. I am not unaware of what suc...
J.M. COETZEE

He would not mind hearing Petrus’s story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and ...
J.M. COETZEE

That was our first time together. Interesting, an interesting experience, but not earth-shaking. But...
J.M. COETZEE

Sleep is no longer a healing bath, a recuperation of vital forces, but an oblivion, a nightly brush ...
J.M. COETZEE

No papers, no money; no family, no friends, no sense of who you are. The obscurest of the obscure, s...
J.M. COETZEE

Die eerlikste manier om die verhaal te vertel, is stilte.
CHRISTOFFEL COETZEE

Iemand anders sal dié storie ook moet vertel om geloofwaardigheid daaraan te gee; die storie kan ni...
CHRISTOFFEL COETZEE

I started visiting the various Super 14 regional franchises from January and explained our aims to t...
DERIK COETZEE

We must do things correctly now if we want to be successful next year. It doesn't help that we offer...
DERIK COETZEE

The secret of happiness is not doing what we like but in liking what we do.
J.M. COETZEE

I am not the we of anyone
J.M. COETZEE

Truth is not spoken in anger. Truth is spoken, if it ever comes to be spoken, in love. The gaze of l...
J.M. COETZEE

With the buck before me suspended in immobility, there seems to be time for all things, time even to...
J.M. COETZEE

Den Staat kümmert nicht, ob der Bürger lebt oder stirbt. Wichtig für den Staat und sein Archiv is...
J.M. COETZEE

Wie es im Zeitalter der Könige naiv gewesen wäre zu glauben, dass der erstgeborene Königssohn der...
J.M. COETZEE

My expectation is that it will expand then decline unless the banks expand the functionality of thei...
GERHARD COETZEE

The challenge is to put a lot of effort in consumer education. If people know what their rights are,...
GERHARD COETZEE

The sun is setting, the sky is a tumult of oranges, reds and violets.
J.M. COETZEE

I truly believe I am not afraid of death. What I shrink from, I believe, is the shame of dying as st...
J.M. COETZEE

From one seed a whole handful: that was what it meant to say the bounty of the earth.
J.M. COETZEE

The reason is that as far as I am concerned, what happened to me is a purely private matter. In anot...
J.M. COETZEE

He would not mind hearing Petrus's story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and mo...
J.M. COETZEE

Poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a flash of respo...
J.M. COETZEE

I'm sorry, my child, I just find it hard to whip up an interest in the subject. It's admirable, what...
J.M. COETZEE

This would fundamentally break our commitment to the other parties. It's impossible for us to accept...
RYAN COETZEE

Die Herren der Information haben die Poesie aus dem Auge verloren, wo Worte eine Bedeutung haben kö...
J.M. COETZEE

Nearly everywhere monarchs raised themselves further above the level of the greatest nobles and butt...
J. M. ROBERTS

There were theoretical elements in the subjection of women and it is not possible to avoid the concl...
J. M. ROBERTS

The Romans had been able to post their laws on boards in public places, confidant that enough litera...
J. M. ROBERTS

Imperialism was genuinely popular among Athenians who would expect to share in its profits, even if ...
J. M. ROBERTS

Overall, the anarchy was the most creative of all periods of Japanese culture for in it there appear...
J. M. ROBERTS

There was an ingredient used in perfumes and remedies in the Middle Ages called 'momie' that...
M. J. ROSE

Vera Caspary wrote thrillers - but not like any other author of her time, male or female. Her specia...
M. J. ROSE

Don't use your advance to buy an antique sports car, diamonds by the yard, or a bottle of wine f...
M. J. ROSE

Social media buzz can lead to huge successes when people spread the word about something they love a...
M. J. ROSE

PR and marketing doesn't sell books. It gets attention for them. It sends readers to bookstores ...
M. J. ROSE

I'm realistic about my career as a novelist. I'm certainly not a superstar and far, far from...
M. J. ROSE

All the marketing and advertising sells the book as what it is and hopes that the book will be displ...
M. J. ROSE

An author's ability to bring a marketing synopsis to the table - along with a great manuscript -...
M. J. ROSE

The one thing I am now sure of is that if there is such a thing as destiny, it is a result of our pa...
M. J. ROSE

The most satisfying thrillers send ordinary people into battle against the forces of evil - otherwis...
M. J. ROSE

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking our careers will come to a standstill, or worse, cra...
M. J. ROSE

You shouldn't talk about yourself all the time - most of us aren't for sale. Our books are. ...
M. J. ROSE

We need to write books that publicists and marketers and booksellers and book club leaders and libra...
M. J. ROSE

Don't add people to your subscriber list just because they once wrote you a note. Or once answer...
M. J. ROSE

A curious mind is the most important attribute any man or woman can possess.
M. J. ROSE

I might have created the phrase 'memory tools', but people have always found talismans to he...
M. J. ROSE

I think that we need to live our lives for the present... as if it is our one and only wild and wond...
M. J. ROSE

I always miss my mom. Mother's Day would be just one more day I'd feel her absence but for t...
M. J. ROSE

Sales don't always have anything to do with good or brilliant or original. Sales are about appea...
M. J. ROSE

Ask your editor or ask your agent to find out what the house's goals are for your book before it...
M. J. ROSE

A mystery is a whodunit. You know what happened, but not how or who's behind it. A thriller, or ...
M. J. ROSE

As a man has no right to kill one of his children if it is diseased or insane, so a man who has made...
J. M. SYNGE

Before MS moved in on me, I'd worked for seven years as a city lawyer, as the editor of a litera...
M. J. HYLAND

The grief of the keen is no personal complaint for the death of one woman over eighty years, but see...
J. M. SYNGE

Lord, confound this surly sister, blight her brow with blotch and blister, cramp her larynx, lung an...
J. M. SYNGE

In the middle classes the gifted son of a family is always the poorest -- usually a writer or artist...
J. M. SYNGE

I'm a good scholar when it comes to reading but a blotting kind of writer when you give me a pen.
J. M. SYNGE

If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up.
J. M. POWER

I was taught to think outside the box. Before my grandfather was one of the original Mad Men, he and...
M. J. ROSE

I know some authors who have gotten $25,000 advances and put it all into marketing, others who alloc...
M. J. ROSE

I think Paris smells not just sweet but melancholy and curious, sometimes sad but always enticing an...
M. J. ROSE

There is no debate that social media is a great tool for networking with others in our industry. It ...
M. J. ROSE

Life is ruthless, and its bestowal of fortune arbitrary and capricious. I'd been born to morons,...
M. J. HYLAND

Buy other authors' books when you go to their events. Even if you aren't going to read it. E...
M. J. ROSE

I have favorite authors from a lifetime of reading, so there are some I'll automatically read ev...
M. J. ROSE

God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.
J M BARRIE

Back in 1999 and 2000, a few of us... a very few of us... Douglas Clegg, Seth Godin and I... offered...
M. J. ROSE

In a good play every speech should be as fully flavored as a nut or apple.
J. M. SYNGE

The biggest mistake is to assume that another writer's successful strategy will work for you, to...
M. J. ROSE

Thriller novelists get asked - berated, sometimes - about whether their work glorifies bad behavior,...
M. J. ROSE

I grew up in New York and have lived here all my life. I think it's the best city in the world a...
M. J. ROSE

When writers stop to sharpen pencils or get up and make coffee to procrastinate, they still stay in ...
M. J. ROSE

I've always been fascinated by the concept of reincarnation. I learned that many brilliant peopl...
M. J. ROSE

Find out if your radio interviewer has read your book, or you are going to have to do that part of t...
M. J. ROSE

It's been more than a decade since I put that self-published novel, 'Lip Service', up on...
M. J. ROSE

MWA and The Author's Guild refused to accept me as a member.
M. J. ROSE

From the very beginning, I envisioned success as selling enough books so I could keep getting publis...
M. J. ROSE

As is the case for many people with multiple sclerosis, the effects of weakened limbs, spasticity an...
M. J. HYLAND

The Fiction Writer's Co-op has 51 members, from celebrated NYT bestsellers to promising newcomer...
M. J. ROSE

There is no A.A. for dogs, no canine twelve-step program. That type of intevention is reserved for t...
M J ZWIERZYNA

From the age of eighteen to twenty-one, I worked any job I could get my hands on. One of these jobs ...
M. J. HYLAND

I've had a dozen novels published and have made far more than a dozen mistakes. Which is why Ran...
M. J. ROSE

Don't spend more than 10% of your marketing/PR budget on a trailer. Trailers have to be marketed...
M. J. ROSE

There's almost no author alive who isn't weathering the tumultuous changes in the publishing...
M. J. ROSE

If I could find anything blacker than black, I'd use it.
J. M. W. TURNER

I am a diamond
But people see me as gold
Honestly, I wanna be silver
M

-I would die for you
-You lie
-If I lie, why do I stand here before and beg on my knees t...
M

Morals; the pathetic answer to authority
Seen two gorillas sharing a banana?
M. COCHET M.

I'm not a leftist; I'm where the righteous ought to be.
M. M. COADY

Reading is a free practice. I think the readers are free to begin by the books where they want to. T...
J. M. G. LE CLEZIO

The novelist, he's not a philosopher, not a technician of spoken language. He's someone who ...
J. M. G. LE CLEZIO

A writer is not a prophet, is not a philosopher; he's just someone who is witness to what is aro...
J. M. G. LE CLEZIO

I can understand better than most the contradiction between the idealistic civilisation and religiou...
J. M. G. LE CLEZIO

I'm used to shifting languages because my father used to speak to us, to my brother and I, he us...
J. M. G. LE CLEZIO

I have the feeling of being a very small item on this planet, and literature enables me to express t...
J. M. G. LE CLEZIO

The writer, the poet, the novelist, are all creators. This does not mean that they invent language; ...
J. M. G. LE CLEZIO

When I was a child, I grew up speaking French, I mean, in a French public school. So my first contac...
J. M. G. LE CLEZIO

My English is closer to the literary English, and I'm not very familiar with jokes in English or...
J. M. G. LE CLEZIO

I grew up in a Mauritian bubble in France... I had the feeling of not belonging, but still living wi...
J. M. G. LE CLEZIO

I've always felt very much from a mixed culture - mainly English and French, but also Nigerian, ...
J. M. G. LE CLEZIO

I don't have any office; I can write everywhere. So, I put a piece of paper on the table, and th...
J. M. G. LE CLEZIO

To understand the hidden secret of the modern industrial world in which I find myself, I have to ret...
J. M. G. LE CLEZIO

If I examine the circumstances which inspired me to write - and this is not mere self-indulgence, bu...
J. M. G. LE CLEZIO

Language is the most extraordinary invention in the history of humanity, the one which came before e...
J. M. G. LE CLEZIO

To act: that is what the writer would like to be able to do, above all. To act, rather than to bear ...
J. M. G. LE CLEZIO

I enjoy very much being in a foreign country, in a new country, new place. And I enjoy also beginnin...
J. M. G. LE CLEZIO

Some of you need a lesson in humility. While your arrogance may give you a sense of power, it may se...
J 'SON M. LEE

My mom taught me from a young age to give back and volunteer any chance you get. It was something th...
J. J. WATT

No doubt about it. For every player. Thursday nights are very tough for us because it is a short tur...
J. J. WATT

When I picture myself after football, it's down home, coaching high school football, just a rela...
J. J. WATT

I know that I'm going out there, and I know that I am going to get hit in the head. I know that&...
J. J. WATT

Since my sophomore year in high school, I knew I didn't want to do anything but be a professiona...
J. J. WATT

If you're an outsider looking into my life, you're thinking, 'That dude is crazy. He'...
J. J. WATT

Houston is kind of a melting pot. There are many different cultures and ethnicities represented out ...
J. J. WATT

I get a lot of letters that say, 'I'm a normal, down-to-earth girl. I love to cook, and I lo...
J. J. WATT

My dad's a firefighter, so I know what it's like for policemen and firefighters to be on the...
J. J. WATT

If you're going to nap, make sure you have a proper chunk of time blocked out. I'm not one o...
J. J. WATT

I will always do what I can to help others, but when I retire, I want to be a dad and a husband. I w...
J. J. WATT

When it comes down to that moment, when it's me against you, you know in your head whether you w...
J. J. WATT

You have to find the right situation, and you have to be in that right mindset where you can give ev...
J. J. WATT

I ate a whole 20-inch pizza by myself one time.
J. J. WATT

A reputation takes years and years and years to build, and it takes one press of a button to ruin it...
J. J. WATT

I'll fight a bear, but I don't like spiders. I'm not a fan of those.
J. J. WATT

I never want to let a day go by without having done something to get a little better.
J. J. WATT

There's no greater feeling in the world than when you can put a smile on somebody's face jus...
J. J. WATT

I want to coach high school football, and that's always what I've wanted to do.
J. J. WATT

People always ask, 'Man, why don't you come out and enjoy it? Why don't you celebrate? W...
J. J. WATT

A sack is way better than any nightclub. A touchdown is way better than any bar experience I've ...
J. J. WATT

If you don't have that vision for the end goal, you have no clue where you're going, and you...
J. J. WATT

I want to go out and chase greatness. That's all I want to do.
J. J. WATT

Midi is my hobby.
J. J. JOHNSON

There are no black film composers doing the likes of Star Wars, doing the likes of E.T., doing the l...
J. J. JOHNSON

I was lucky enough to occasionally break out of that racist situation that prevails in the Hollywood...
J. J. JOHNSON

Sometimes you need to stand with your nose to the window and have a good look at jazz. And I've ...
J. J. JOHNSON

We have this obsession with broken homes. Everyone wants to find a problem with it, but not me. I ha...
J. J. FIELD

You can win a talent show and be so famous that you can't walk down the street, but no-one knows...
J. J. FIELD

The two cities I've found very hard to leave in my life were New York and Buenos Aires.
J. J. FIELD

The ability of a television series to make adjustments is something you've got to take advantage...
J. J. ABRAMS

I hate to look at the stuff I've written and consider what it means or why I do it.
J. J. ABRAMS

I've had the same friends since I was in kindergarten.
J. J. ABRAMS

I believe in anything that will engage the audience and make the story more effective.
J. J. ABRAMS

When I was a kid, among the other embarrassing things I would do, and there's a list of stupid t...
J. J. ABRAMS

People never know what they want, though everyone says they do. If they did, nobody would ever be su...
J. J. ABRAMS

The goal is always to do B material in an A fashion.
J. J. ABRAMS

I don't try and write strong female characters or strong male characters, I just try and write, ...
J. J. ABRAMS

I work with really hard-working people who are really good at what they do.
J. J. ABRAMS

Pitching is always a weird, difficult thing.
J. J. ABRAMS

Whenever a toddler sees a pile of blocks, he wants to tear it down.
J. J. ABRAMS

I don't think I have a signature.
J. J. ABRAMS

I'm not trying to be coy or manipulative or Machiavellian, I want to spark people's imaginat...
J. J. ABRAMS

I think that even if you're wondering if two characters are ever going to kiss, drawing out the ...
J. J. ABRAMS

I love the idea of anthropomorphizing machines. I love the idea of taking technology and giving it a...
J. J. ABRAMS

I try to push ideas away, and the ones that will not leave me alone are the ones that ultimately end...
J. J. ABRAMS

When I was a kid, it was a huge insult to be a geek. Now it's a point of pride in a weird way.
J. J. ABRAMS

You never want to have that ticking clock and know that you had all this time and didn't use it.
J. J. ABRAMS

To me the interesting main character is never the one without flaws.
J. J. ABRAMS

I think you have a passion and an obsession for something when it's not necessarily ubiquitous.
J. J. ABRAMS

We live in an age of instant knowledge. And there's almost a sense of entitlement to that.
J. J. ABRAMS

It's a leap of faith doing any serialised storytelling.
J. J. ABRAMS

When you work on something that combines both the spectacular and the relatable, the hyperreal and t...
J. J. ABRAMS

Robotics are beginning to cross that line from absolutely primitive motion to motion that resembles ...
J. J. ABRAMS

You can never guess or assume what anyone is going to think.
J. J. ABRAMS

When budget cuts happen - which has been happening a lot in this country - after-school athletics an...
J. J. WATT

I'm not strict on my calorie count; I just pay attention to my body.
J. J. WATT

There are things of deadly earnest that can only be mentioned under the cover of a joke.
J. J. PROCTER

If you want to be remembered as great, if you want to be a legend, you have to go out there every si...
J. J. WATT

I obviously would love to have a girlfriend, but a girlfriend deserves so much of your time and ener...
J. J. WATT

What I remember most about high school are the memories I created with my friends.
J. J. WATT

I'm obsessed with things that are distinctly analogue.
J. J. ABRAMS

Death is a low chemical trick played on everybody except sequoia trees.
J. J. FURNAS

What's a bigger mystery box than a movie theater? You go to the theater, you're just so exci...
J. J. ABRAMS

My dad was a firefighter for almost 30 years. My mom worked her way up from a secretary to vice pres...
J. J. WATT

I'm sure I frustrate the trainers - in fact, I know I frustrate the trainers to no end. But I th...
J. J. WATT

What I'm still grappling with and learning how to do is to be looking and thinking cinematically...
J. J. ABRAMS

With three kids you are just trying to survive. You can't be fastidious.
J. J. ABRAMS

You can find just about everything on my iPod from Eminem to Zac Brown to Justin Timberlake to One D...
J. J. WATT

My family is a middle-class family. When I grew up and learned how much it actually cost for us to p...
J. J. WATT

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 accept the historical past of the new country as one's own.

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J. M. Coetzee

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 accept the historical past of the new country as one's own.

J. M. Coetzee

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