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It is the knowledge of how contingent my unease is, how dependent on a baby that wails beneath my window one day and does not wail the next, that brings the worst shame to me, the greatest indifference to annihilation.

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

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More quotes by J. M. Coetzee

There is nothing to link me with torturers, people who sit waiting like beetles in dark cellars.

Waiting for the Barbarians (1980)

But why should people with nowhere to go run away from the nice life we've got here?

Life & Times of Michael K (1983)

He is here, with her, out of love. *He cannot imagine her getting through this trial without him at her side.”

Elizabeth Costello (2003)

Can't you tell the difference between a thin man and a skeleton?

Life & Times of Michael K (1983)

She inhabits her characters as a woman does, not a man.

Elizabeth Costello (2003)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: J. M. Coetzee (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.