My thoughts ran to Friday… Had I not been there to restrain him, would he in his hunger have eaten the babe? I told myself I did him wrong to think o… - J. M. Coetzee

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My thoughts ran to Friday… Had I not been there to restrain him, would he in his hunger have eaten the babe? I told myself I did him wrong to think of him as a cannibal or worse, a devourer of the dead. But Cruso had planted the seed in my mind, and now I could not look on Friday’s lips without calling to mind what mean must once have passed them.

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About J. M. Coetzee

John Maxwell Coetzee (born 9 February 1940), often called J. M. Coetzee, is a South African-born writer and academic. A novelist and literary critic as well as a translator, Coetzee won the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He now lives in Australia.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Native Name: John Maxwell Coetzee
Alternative Names: John Coetzee J.M. Coetzee
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As during the time of kings it would have been naive to think that the king’s firstborn son would be the fittest to rule, so in our time it is naive to think that the democratically elected ruler will be the fittest. The rule of succession is not a formula for identifying the best ruler, it is a formula for conferring legitimacy on someone or other and thus forestalling civil conflict.

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