J. M. Coetzee - Waiting for the Barbarians (1980)

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Sleep is no longer a healing bath, a recuperation of vital forces, but an oblivion, a nightly brush with annihilation.

J. M. Coetzee

Where civilization entailed the corruption of barbarian virtues and the creation of dependent people, I decided, I was opposed to civilization.

J. M. Coetzee

One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era.

J. M. Coetzee

To the last we have learned nothing. In all of us, deep down, there seems to be something granite and unteachable. No one truly believes, despite the hysteria in the streets that the world of tranquil certainties we were born into is about to be extinguished.

J. M. Coetzee

I know somewhat too much; and from this knowledge, once one has been infected, there seems to be no recovering.

J. M. Coetzee

All creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice.

J. M. Coetzee