Dusklands

Dusklands (1974) by J. M. Coetzee Dusklands (1974) is the debut novel by J. M. Coetzee, winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. The novel consists of two separate stories, "The Vietnam Project" and "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee."

Quotes

 * guns save us from the fear that all life is within us
 * Page 84


 * has been composed facing east into the rising sun and in a mood of poignant regret (poindre, to pierce) that I am rooted in the evening lands.
 * Page 7


 * The bushveld is full of stories, stories without end. You can't stop them. They come out of the trees, they come out of the rocks, they come out of the earth.
 * Page 26, Chapter 2


 * I am not a hunter, I am a story-teller. It's not my job to kill, it's my job to tell stories.
 * Page 35, Chapter 4


 * You can't live with your past, you can't live without it. That's the paradox of memory.
 * Page 46, Chapter 3


 * The Boers are a strange people. They are afraid of the wilderness, yet they live in it. They are afraid of the black people, yet they need them. They are afraid of the future, yet they are always looking forward.
 * Page 56, Chapter 5


 * The only way to escape from your past is to become someone else. But who can you become? What other selves are there?
 * Page 96, Chapter 1


 * The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.
 * Page 106, Chapter 2


 * I am writing about a man who is trying to find his own story, to find his own place in the world. He is searching for the truth, for the meaning of his life, but he is also searching for something else, something that is beyond words, something that is beyond understanding.
 * Page 116, Chapter 3


 * The past is always with us, even when we think we have escaped it. It lives in our memories, in our dreams, in the very air we breathe.
 * Page 126, Chapter 4


 * The world is full of stories, stories that are waiting to be told. But who will tell them? Who will listen?
 * Page 136, Chapter 5


 * What is a man without a story? A man without a story is a man without a soul."
 * Page 154, Chapter 5