Waiting for the Barbarians by J M Coetzee

"Prisoners are prisoners."

"Once in every generation, without fail, there is an episode of hysteria about the barbarians."

"Nothing is worse than what we can imagine."

"I did not want to become involved in a matter I did not understand!"

"My pulse does not quicken: evidently it is not important to me that the ram dies."

"I sleep beside her—but I might equally well tie her to a chair and beat her."

"She is not just the old man's slut, she is a witty, attractive young woman!"

"Tell them the truth. What else is there to tell?"

"The bond is broken. I am a free man."

"I daily become more like a beast or simply machine."

"I cannot save the prisoners, therefore let me save myself."

"How can you be a prisoner when we have no record of you?"

"The more they are fawned on, the more their arrogance grows."

"The crime that is latent in us we must inflict on ourselves."

"There is a whole side to the story that you don't know."

"I have not seen the capital since I was a young man”"

"A certain tone enters the voice of a man who is telling the truth. Training and experience teach us to recognize that tone”"

"I never wished to be drawn into this…I did not mean to get embroiled in this. I am a country magistrate, a responsible official in the service of the Empire, serving out my days on the lazy frontier, waiting to retire….I have not asked for more than a quiet life in quiet times”"

"“Looking at him I wonder how he felt the very first time: did he, invited as an apprentice to twist the pincers or turn the screw or whatever it is they do, shudder even a little to know that at that instant he was trespassing into the forbidden? I find myself wondering too whether he has a private ritual of purification, carried out behind closed doors, to enable him to return and break bread with other men”."

"The distance between myself and her torturers, I realize, is negligible”"

"It’s been growing more and more clear to me that until the marks on this girl’s body are understood, I cannot let go of her…”."

"How can I believe that a bed is anything but a bed, a woman’s body anything but a site of joy? I must assert my distance from Colonel Joll! I will not suffer for his crimes!”"

"The thought of the strange ecstasies I have approached through the medium of her incomplete body fills me with dry revulsion as if I had spent nights copulating with a dummy of straw and leather. What could I ever have seen in her?”."

""However kindly she may be treated by her own people, she will never be courted and married in the normal way; she is marked for life as the property of a stranger, and no one will approach her save in the the spirit of lugubrious sensual pity that she detected and rejected in me. No wonder she fell asleep so often, no wonder she was happier peeling vegetables than in my bed!" (135)."

""No one can accept that the imperial army has been annihilated by men with bows and arrows and rusty old guns who live in tents and cannot read or write"."