{
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  "site": {
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    "language": "en",
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  "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.",
  "title": "Foe",
  "slug": "foe",
  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/foe",
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  "author": {
    "name": "J. M. Coetzee",
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      "slug": "nothing-i-have",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/foe/nothing-i-have",
      "text": "Nothing I have forgotten is worth the remembering.",
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      "page": 17,
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      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:51:30"
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      "slug": "would-gladly-now",
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      "text": "Would gladly now recount to you the history of this singular Cruso, as I heard it from his own lips. But the stories he told me were so various and so hard to reconcile one with another, that I was more and more driven to conclude age and isolation had taken their toll on his memory, he no longer knew for sure what truth, what fancy.",
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      "slug": "seen-from-too",
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      "text": "Seen from too remote a vantage, life begins to lose its particularity. All shipwrecks become the same shipwreck, all castaways the same castaway, sunburnt, lonely, clad in the skins of the beast he has slain.",
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      "slug": "to-me-the",
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      "text": "To me the moral is that he has the last word who disposes over the greatest force. I mean the executioner and his assistants, both great and small. If I were the Irish woman, I should rest most uneasy in my grave knowing to what interpreter the story of my last hours has been consigned.",
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      "slug": "i-would-rather",
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      "text": "I would rather be the author of my story than have lies told about me.",
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    {
      "id": "d0e2fe23-f30b-41ec-9557-51b879eab1a3",
      "slug": "to-hold-us-in-check",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/foe/to-hold-us-in-check",
      "text": "To hold us in check when our desires grow immoderate. As long as our desires are moderate we have no need of laws.",
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          "name": "sexual desire",
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      "slug": "if-providence-were",
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      "text": "If Providence were to watch over all of us,” said Cruso, “who would be left to pick the cotton and cut the sugar cane? For the business of the world to prosper, Providence must sometimes wake and sometimes sleep, as lower creatures do.”",
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      "slug": "he-is-the",
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      "text": "He is the child of his silence.",
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      "text": "I tell myself I talked to Friday to educate him out of darkness and silence. But is that the truth? There are times when benevolence deserts me and I use words only as the shortest way to subject him to my will.",
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      "slug": "cannibals-are-no-less",
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      "text": "Cannibals are no less dull than Englishmen.",
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      "slug": "i-am-a-free",
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      "text": "I am a free woman who asserts her freedom by telling her story.",
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      "slug": "to-live-in-silence",
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      "text": "To live in silence is to live like the whales.",
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      "slug": "if-we-devote",
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      "text": "If we devote ourselves to finding holes exactly shaped to house such great words as Freedom, Honor, Bliss, I agree, we shall spend a lifetime slipping and sliding and searching, and all in vain.",
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      "slug": "we-can-bring",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/foe/we-can-bring",
      "text": "We can bring [the island] to life only by setting it within a larger story.",
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      "text": "But those whom we have abused we customarily grow to hate.",
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      "text": "To tell the truth in all its substance you must have quiet and a comfortable chair away from all distraction, and a window to stare through and then the knack of seeing waves when there are fields before your eyes…",
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