# Waiting for the Barbarians by J M Coetzee

[[w: Waiting for the Barbarians | Waiting for the Barbarians ] (first published in 1980) is a Novel by John Maxwell Coetzee, J M Coetzee a South African and Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature The book was chosen by Penguin for its series [[Great Books of the 20th Century and won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prizeand Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for fiction Coetzee is said to have taken the title as well as to have been heavily influenced by the 1904 poem "Waiting for the Barbarians" by the Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy.

## Quotes

* Prisoners are prisoners.
** Colonel Joll, Chapter 1.
* Once in every generation, without fail, there is an episode of hysteria about the barbarians.
** The magistrate, Chapter 1
* Nothing is worse than what we can imagine.
** The magistrate, Chapter 2.
* I did not want to become involved in a matter I did not understand!
** The guard, Chapter 2.
* My pulse does not quicken: evidently it is not important to me that the ram dies.
** The magistrate, Chapter 2.
* I sleep beside her—but I might equally well tie her to a chair and beat her.
** The magistrate, Chapter 2.
* She is not just the old man's slut, she is a witty, attractive young woman!
** The magistrate, Chapter 3.
* Tell them the truth. What else is there to tell?
** The magistrate, Chapter 3.
* The bond is broken. I am a free man.
** The magistrate, Chapter 4.
* I daily become more like a beast or simply machine.
** The magistrate, Chapter 4.
* I cannot save the prisoners, therefore let me save myself.
** The magistrate, Chapter 4.
* How can you be a prisoner when we have no record of you?
** Mandel, Chapter 5.
* The more they are fawned on, the more their arrogance grows.
** The magistrate, Chapter 5.
* The crime that is latent in us we must inflict on ourselves.
** The magistrate, Chapter 6.
* The crime that is latent in us we must inflict on ourselves.
** The magistrate, Chapter 6.
* There is a whole side to the story that you don't know.
** The magistrate, Chapter 6.
* *I have not seen the capital since I was a young man”
** The magistrate, Page 2.
* A certain tone enters the voice of a man who is telling the truth. Training and experience teach us to recognize that tone”
** Colonel Joll,page 4.
* 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”
** The magistrate, page 8.
* “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 magistrate, page 12.
* The distance between myself and her torturers, I realize, is negligible”
** The magistrate, page 27.
* 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…”.
** The magisrtate, page 31.
* 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 magistrate, page 44.
* 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?”.
** The magistrate, page 47.
* "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).
** The magistrate, page 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".
** The magistrate, page 143.

## External Links

https://www.gradesaver.com/waiting-for-the-barbarians/study-guide/quotes
https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Waiting-for-the-Barbarians/quotes/