Once I lived in time as a fish in water, breathing it, drinking it, sustained by it. Now I kill time and time kills me.
J. M. CoetzeeRead
His mouth opens. From inside him comes a slow stream, without breath, without interruption. It flows up through his body and out upon me; it passes through the cabin, through the wreck; washing the cliffs and shores of the island, it runs northward and southward to the ends of the earth. Soft and cold, dark and unending, it beats against my eyelids, against the skin of my face.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the deep and uninterrupted flow of expression and connection that transcends physical boundaries.
The passage captures the essence of a profound and unbroken stream of thought or emotion that emanates from a person. It signifies how feelings can be powerful and pervasive, reaching beyond oneself to touch others and the world around us, symbolizing the interconnectedness of existence and the impact one can have on a broader scale.
Themes
ExpressionConnectionEmotionInterconnectednessExistence
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the power of storytelling, one might quote this to illustrate how narratives transcend individual experience.
More from J. M. Coetzee
All quotes →Children 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.
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The masters of information have forgotten about poetry, where words may have a meaning quite different from what the lexicon says, where the metaphoric spark is always one jump ahead of the decoding function, where another, unforeseen reading is always possible.
J. M. CoetzeeRead
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. CoetzeeRead
He 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. CoetzeeRead
Denunciations of the manipulativeness of advertisers can unfortunately all too easily be turned on their heads into denunciations of the gullibility of consumers. Both are forms of scapegoating, neither accomplishes anything.
J. M. CoetzeeRead
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