J. M. Coetzee Quotes

My fascination is not for cinema; it's for human nature and human beings because I find it quite difficult being one at times.

I really do feel like I know myself, and I'm so happy to be by myself and I'm so happy to be with other people; I just know myself really, really well, and I think that is an amazing thing. I think a lot of people don't know themselves that well.

I think part of maturity is knowing who you are.

Ninety per cent of the world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves - so how can we know anyone else?

Forty is better than 30. I have a better understanding of who I am, what makes me tick, what's okay and not okay.

If you don't understand yourself you don't understand anybody else.

However fascinating you may think you are, there is a limit to what you can know about yourself.

We're all different; we all have our ways of understanding ourselves and the way we live our lives and struggle with our humanity.

The best advice Drake's given anybody is to know yourself. It's the most important thing to live by.

I don't think anyone really knows me.

Binaries aside, we are the products of our relationships with our identities - cities we have built, bodies we have embraced, kindred souls we've cherished, our memories, our dreams, the fears we hide, the pain we hold - identities that cannot be reduced to a collection of labels.

If you can get to know a person, and you can really understand them, it can usually help you better understand yourself and why you believe what you believe.

Self knowledge begins with the neighbor, the mirror, and just the same with true self-love; that goes from the mirror to the matter.

To think that I know what's best for anyone else is to be out of my business. Even in the name of love, it is pure arrogance, and the result is tension, anxiety, and fear. Do I know what's right for me? That is my only business. Let me work with that before I try to solve problems for you.

For it is easy to criticize and break down the spirit of others, but to know yourself takes a lifetime.

I have a very great fear of love. It is so personal. Let each bird fly with its own wings, and each fish swim its own course.--Morning brings more than love. And I want to be true to the morning.

I do know my own mind,' protested Anne. 'The trouble is, my mind changes and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again.

A soul which knows that it is loved, but does not itself love, betrays its sediment: its dregs come up.

...I know all about myself now, I know. You've told me so often. You haven't left me one rag of illusion to clothe myself in.

The thing I am most aware of is my limits. And this is natural; for I never, or almost never, occupy the middle of my cage; my whole being surges toward the bars.

All relationship is a reflection of your relationship with yourself.

Maturity, the way I understand it, is knowing what your limitations are.

I think it's important to know yourself before you try to deal with a relationship.

I don't take anything personally. I am a secondary character in other people's stories. I know that whatever people say about me is just a projection of their image of me. It has nothing to do with me.

It's definitely the biggest lesson - not to take things personally. But it's also the hardest one.