“...which we welcomed precisely because it happened to suit our convenience.”

“We have nothing but a history of our own invention to support this view. It suits us to believe it. It allows us to mistreat them, but convenience is not truth.”

“In Coetzee's eyes, we human beings will never abandon politics because politics is too convenient and too attractive as a theatre in which to give play to our baser emotions.”

“We must be listened to: above and beyond our personal experience, we have collectively witnessed a fundamental unexpected event, fundamental precisely because unexpected, not foreseen by anyone. It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere.”

“Suppose our failures occur, not in spite of what we are doing, but precisely because of it.”

“Knowledge subverts love: in proportion as we penetrate our secrets, we come to loathe our kind, precisely because they resemble us.”