J. M. Coetzee Quotes

I think Poe had a mission to tell us what it's all about. To answer some of the great questions of life.

I have never been able, really, to figure out where my life begins and where it ends. I have never, never been able to figure it all out, what it's all about, what it all means.

I'm basically a happy person. I'm content with my life and my wife and my family. But you do reach a point where you start to question the absolutes that are supposedly out there, and you realize that there simply are no absolutes.

I think of myself as being a relatively intelligent man who is open to a lot of different things and I think that questioning our purpose in life and the meaning of existence is something that we all go through at some point.

Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.

I was reared a Catholic but I think every day we ask ourselves, not consciously, what are we doing on this planet? What's it all about?

The business of living - that's your artwork, and the process of that is finding out who you are, what it all means.

I kind of feel, in a way, all of us will forever be asking those questions of ourselves: Who am I and how do I fit in in the world and what is all this about? Because those aren't really... there are no answers to those questions, in a sense.

Who does understand life?

For me, one of the things art has to examine is how to live your life, and unless it's doing that, it doesn't work for me.

I think we all do: I think we wonder if we're supposed to be here, if we're doing the right thing, if we even want to be here. At least, I do all the time.

I grew up in a small industrial suburb of Haifa in Israel. As far back as I remember, I was interested in big questions. Who are we? What are we doing here? But the chances to discuss philosophy were quite thin on the ground.

Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

You don't reach points in life at which everything is sorted out for us. I believe in endings that should suggest our stories always continue.

All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.

If I had to summarize, most broadly, my concerns as a writer, I'd say the question 'How then must we live?' is at the heart of it, for me.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Not sure of my place in the world (still up for debate) and not sure what I wanted to do with my life (not really up for debate).

The most interesting thing in the world is another human being who wonders, suffers and raises the questions that have bothered him to the last day of his life, knowing he will never get the answers.

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.

Sometimes, I wonder what I'm doing here.

I think it's really important for your mental health to think about the big questions, to discuss them and open your mind, in order to prepare you for both life and death.

Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, 'Why not?' and the other, 'Why bother?'