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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Similar quotes
The merit of Marx is that he suddenly produces a qualitative change in the history of social thought. He interprets history, understands its dynamic, predicts the future, but in addition to predicting it (which would satisfy his scientific obligation), he expresses a revolutionary concept: the world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed. Man ceases to be the slave and tool of his environment and converts himself into the architect of his own destiny.
It is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws expose themselves.
It is my belief, that we should not be too sure of having found Christ in ourselves until we have found him also in that part of humanity that is most remote from our own.
The unspeakable visions of the individual.
Prejudice: Sometimes it's like a hair across your cheek. You can't see it, you can't find it with your fingers, but you keep brushing at it because the feel of it is irritating.
We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them.