Quotes from J.M. Coetzee

Decía que finges ser un ciudadano respetable y un hombre racional, pero en realidad no eres más que un niño perdido. Así lo decía textualmente: un niño que no sabe dónde vive ni qué quiere. Una

The shocks of existence: he must learn to take them more lightly.

Because it is not in the nature of love affairs for the lovers to see each other whole and steady.

I was all a mistake! There was a black fish swimming among all those white fish and that black fish was chosen to be me. I was a sister to none of them, I was ill chance itself, I was a shark, an infant black shark. Why did you not recognize it and cut its throat? What kind of merciful father were you who never cared for me but sent me out into the world a monster? Crush me, devour me, annihilate me before it is too late! Wipe me clean...

Curious that a man as selfish as he should be offering himself to the service of dead dogs. There must be other, more productive ways of giving oneself to the world, or to an idea of the world... But there are other people to do these things - the animal welfare thing, the social rehabilitation thing, even the Byron thing. He saves the honour of corpses because there is no one else stupid enough to do it.

You will believe me when I say the life we lead grows less and less distinct from the life we led on Cruso's island. Sometimes I wake up not knowing where I am. The world is full of islands, said Cruso once. His words ring truer every day.

You are like a stick insect, Michaels, whose sole defence against a universe of predators is its bizarre shape. You are like a stick insect that has landed, God knows how, in the middle of a great wide flat bare concrete plain. You raise your slow fragile stick-legs one at a time, you inch about looking for something to merge with, and there is nothing. Why did you ever leave the bushes, Michaels?

Nos vemos transportados literalmente por una nube de buena voluntad. Pero todo es un poco abstracto. ¿Puede la buena voluntad satisfacer por sí sola todas nuestras necesidades? ¿No es parte de nuestra naturaleza anhelar algo más tangible?

For that is surely what a woman wants: to be courted, wooed, persuaded, won! Even when she surrenders, she wants to give herself up not frankly but in a delicious haze of confusion, resisting yet unresisting. Falling, but never an irrevocable falling. No: to fall and then come back from the fall new, remade, virginal, ready to be wooed again and to fall again. A playing with death, a play of resurrection.

A world without me is inconceivable.

Qué le da a un desconocido, a un hombre que no la vio en su vida, el derecho a ponerse una toga escarlata y decir: «Una vida entera de encierro, ese es el valor de su vida»? O bien: «Veinticinco años en las minas de sal». ¡No tiene ningún sentido! ¡Hay crímenes que no se pueden medir!

How he wishes it could be true! He is tired of shadows, of complications, of complicated people.

No somos estúpidos. Si necesitásemos que nos salvaran, ya nos habríamos salvado a nosotros mismos. No, no somos nosotros los estúpidos, sino sus agudos razonamientos, que solo le proporcionan respuestas equivocadas.

Even if you choose someone who is not necessarily the love of your life, married life will be better than what you have now, with just your father and yourself. It is not good to sleep alone night after night.

It used to be that he, John, had too little employment. Now that is about to change. Now he will have as much employment as he can handle, as much and more. He is going to have to abandon some of his personal projects and be a nurse. Alternatively, if he will not be a nurse, he must announce to his father: I cannot face the prospect of ministering to you day and night. I am going to abandon you. Goodbye. One or the other: there is no third way.

she prefers to think in similitudes rather than reason things out...

Pero no va a volver. Se ha ido. Ya es agua pasada, y el pasado ya se ha ido para siempre. Es una ley de la naturaleza. Ni siquiera las estrellas pueden nadar en contra de la corriente del tiempo.

Pero tal vez no haya un porqué. Tal vez sea como preguntar por qué un pollo es un pollo, o por qué existe un universo y no un agujero enorme en el cielo. Las cosas son como son.

Pero su hijo no le está pidiendo que analice oraciones gramaticalmente; le pregunta por qué está aquí. Para qué. Con qué fin. Pide una respuesta al gran misterio que todos, hasta el microbio más humilde, tenemos que encarar.

Para ellos, en cambio, soy especial. No tengo conciencia, o bien tengo demasiada, no consiguen decidirse.

Porque carece de talento para mentir, engañar o saltarse las normas, igual que tampoco lo tiene para el placer y la ropa moderna. Solo tiene talento para la tristeza, la tristeza sincera y aburrida.

Lamentablemente, no. No recuerdo nada, ni el pasado ni el futuro. Comparado contigo, David, soy un tipo muy obtuso, nada excepcional; de hecho, todo lo opuesto de excepcional. Vivo en el presente, como un buey.

Yo tengo ganas de decirles que la conciencia se te come hasta que no queda nada de ti, como una araña que se come a una avispa, o una avispa que se come a una araña, nunca me acuerdo de cómo va, y solo queda la carcasa.

Se puede quedar tranquilo, señor, no vamos a hacer restas. La sustracción, la adición, la aritmética en general tienen poca importancia para alguien que afronta una crisis tan profunda en su vida.