# Quote — J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians

> We have been here more than a hundred years, we have reclaimed land from the desert and built irrigation works and planted fields and built solid homes and put a wall around our town, but they still think of us as visitors, transients.

- Author: [J. M. Coetzee](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee.md)
- Book: [Waiting for the Barbarians](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/waiting-for-the-barbarians.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._M._Coetzee#Waiting_for_the_Barbarians_(1980)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/waiting-for-the-barbarians/we-have-been

## More from this book

> How can I accept that disaster has overtaken my life when the world continues to move so tranquilly through its cycles?

p. 102 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/waiting-for-the-barbarians/how-can-i-accept.md)

> Truly, man was not made to live alone!

p. 87 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/waiting-for-the-barbarians/truly-man-was.md)

> 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/waiting-for-the-barbarians/it-is-the.md)