He would not mind hearing Petrus’s story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit mediu… - J. M. Coetzee

It is the knowledge of how contingent my unease is, how dependent on a baby that wails beneath my window one day and does not wail the next, that brings the worst shame to me, the greatest indifference to annihilation.

"All creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice. "But we live in a world of laws," I said to my poor prisoner, "a world of the second best. There is nothing we can do about that. We are fallen creatures. All we can do is uphold the laws, all of us, without allowing the memory of justice to fade.

It reminds me too much of Mao’s China. Recantation, self-criticism, public apology.