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. CoetzeeI said to myself, 'If you don't sit down to it today, when will you ever sit down to it?'
J. M. CoetzeeThe mode of consciousness of nonhuman species is quite different from human consciousness.
J. M. CoetzeeWe must cultivate, all of us, a certain ignorance, a certain blindness, or society will not be tolerable.
J. M. CoetzeeHe 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