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.
J. M. CoetzeeChildren all over the world consort quite naturally with animals. They don't see any dividing line. That is something they have to be taught, just as they have to be taught it is all right to kill and eat them.
J. M. CoetzeeWe must cultivate, all of us, a certain ignorance, a certain blindness, or society will not be tolerable.
J. M. CoetzeeBut he cannot see a connection between the end of yearning and the end of poetry. Is that what growing up amounts to: growing out of yearning, of passion, of all intensities of the soul?
J. M. Coetzee