J. M. Coetzee

"Why? Because a woman's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it."

The boy is special, Aunt Annie told his mother, and his mother in turn told him. But what kind of special? No one ever says.

Sometimes when he is among the sheep — when they have been rounded up to be dipped, and are penned tight and cannot get away — he wants to whisper to them, warn them of what lies in store. But then in their yellow eyes he catches a glimpse of something that silences him: a resignation, a foreknowledge not only of what happens to sheep at the hands of Ros behind the shed, but of what awaits them at the end of their long, thirsty ride to Cape Town on the transport lorry. They know it all, down to the finest detail, and yet they submit. They have calculated the price and are prepared to pay it — the price of being on earth, the price of being alive.

He is angry at his mother for not having normal children and making them live a normal life.

I’m dubious, Lucy. It sounds suspiciously like community service. It sounds like someone trying to make reparation for past misdeeds.’

What was ignoble about the Kenilworth spectacle was that the poor dog had begun to hate its own nature. It no longer needed to be beaten. It was ready to punish itself. At that point it would have been better to shoot it.

... the whole thing is disgraceful from beginning to end. Disgraceful and vulgar.

Note that we are not asked to condemn this being with the mad heart, this being with whom there is some­ thing constitutionally wrong.

It is the mother and children who make up the core and the husband only a contributor to the economy as a paying lodger might be.

My case rests on the rights of desire,’ he says. ‘On the god who makes even the small birds quiver.’

Scandal. A pity that must be his theme, but he is in no state to improvise.

Don’t expect sympathy from me, David, and don’t expect sympathy from anyone else either. No sympathy, no mercy, not in this day and age. Everyone’s hand will be against you, and why not? Really, how could you