J. M. Coetzee - Truth Quotes

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It is not, then, in the content or substance of folly that its difference from truth lies, but in where it comes from. It comes not from 'the wise man's mouth' but from the mouth of the subject assumed not to know and speak the truth.

J. M. Coetzee

No, Paul, I couldn't care less if you tell me made-up stories. Our lies reveal as much about us as our truths.' (Said to Paul by Elizabeth Costello, the interloping novelist-angel-inner voice).

J. M. Coetzee

But truth is not spoken in anger. Truth is spoken, if it ever comes to be spoken, in love.

J. M. Coetzee

My existence from day to day has become a matter of averting my eyes, of cringing. Death is the only truth left. Death is what I cannot bear to think. At every moment when I am thinking of something else, I am not thinking death, am not thinking the truth.

J. M. Coetzee

The truth is, he tired of criticism, tired of prose measured by the yard.

J. M. Coetzee