Once I lived in time as a fish in water, breathing it, drinking it, sustained by it. Now I kill time and time kills me.
J. M. CoetzeeRead
One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the relentless pursuit of power by an empire and its desperate attempts to avoid downfall.
J. M. Coetzee's quote explores the psyche of an empire that is consumed by fear of its own mortality and the lengths it will go to maintain its dominance. The imagery of relentless aggression during the day juxtaposed with a haunting reflection on disaster at night suggests a dual nature of empires: both a predator and a victim of its own aspirations, continually haunted by the consequences of its actions and the inevitable decline that awaits all great powers.
Themes
EmpirePowerMortalityDownfallFearDomination
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about imperialism, one could reference this quote to illustrate the internal struggles of empires.
More from J. M. Coetzee
All quotes →Children all over the world consort quite naturally with animals. They don't see any dividing line. That is something they have to be taught, just as they have to be taught it is all right to kill and eat them.
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The masters of information have forgotten about poetry, where words may have a meaning quite different from what the lexicon says, where the metaphoric spark is always one jump ahead of the decoding function, where another, unforeseen reading is always possible.
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My existence from day to day has become a matter of averting my eyes, of cringing. Death is the only truth left. Death is what I cannot bear to think. At every moment when I am thinking of something else, I am not thinking death, am not thinking the truth.
J. M. CoetzeeRead
He even knew the reason why: because enough men had gone off to war saying the time for gardening was when the war was over; whereas there must be men to stay behind and keep gardening alive, or at least the idea of gardening; because once that cord was broken, the earth would grow hard and forget her children. That was why.
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Denunciations of the manipulativeness of advertisers can unfortunately all too easily be turned on their heads into denunciations of the gullibility of consumers. Both are forms of scapegoating, neither accomplishes anything.
J. M. CoetzeeRead
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