Deon Meyer > Quotes

“Hebzucht heeft geen kleur.”
― Deon Meyer, Onzichtbaar

“We remember the moments of fear, loss and humiliation most vividly.”
― Deon Meyer, Fever: Epic story of rebuilding civilization after a world-ruining virus

“Ik wilde haar weer horen lachen. Sterker nog: ik wilde de lach uit haar tevoorschijn toveren, ik wilde de reden zijn waarom die melodie gespeeld werd, want het was de klank van geluk, van tevredenheid, van alles wat goed en mooi was in de wereld.”
― Deon Meyer, Onsigbaar

“…En wat is dit dié? Duitse owner van ʼn boereplaas met ʼn Franse naam waar ʼn Brit gekidnap is. Fucking United Nations of Crime, dis wat ons nou word.”
― Deon Meyer, Cobra

“Long story short, I have always been fascinated by how we absolutely need to be in a relationship. I mean, it consumes us, that need, that terrible need to be loved, to be with someone.”
― Deon Meyer, Fever A Novel

“But a day later, it was ‘Prof Tim says low fat is a fraud,’ when he was eating a tub of yoghurt at his desk for breakfast. He let that slide too. Until the following morning, when he and a packet of Simba salt-and-vinegar crisps walked out of the morning parade, and Mbali said, ‘Prof Tim says it’s the carbs that make you fat, you know,’ and he couldn’t take it any more and snapped: ‘Prof Tim who?’ And so she told him. Everything. About this Prof Tim Noakes who once got the whole fokken world eating pasta, and then he did an about face and said, no, carbs are what’s making everyone obese, and he wrote a book of recipes, and now he was Mbali’s big hero, ‘Because it takes a great man to admit that he was wrong’, and she had already lost so much weight and she had so much more energy, and it wasn’t all that hard, she didn’t miss the carbs because now she ate cauliflower rice and cauliflower mash and flax seed bread. Flax seed bread, for fuck’s sake.”
― Deon Meyer, Icarus

“Years later I realised he left sex out when he came to Maslow’s list of physiological needs. I don’t blame him.”
― Deon Meyer, Fever A Novel

“We are starting a sanctuary, a community that will have justice, wisdom, moderation and courage…”
“It’s from Plato,” said Pa. “From The Republic.”
“I see,” said Hennie, in a tone that revealed he had no idea what Pa was talking about.”
― Deon Meyer, Fever A Novel

“I want you to go and talk, Jamie. Watch the body language, look at the eyes. Don’t make accusations. Just talk. Ask if they saw anything. Ask if Laurens was a difficult employer. Be sympathetic. Ask if they have heard of the assegai man. Give them a chance to talk. Sometimes they talk easily and too much. Listen, Jamie. Listen with both your ears and your eyes and your head. The thing with a murder investigation is, first you look at it from a distance, look at everything. Then you come a step closer and look again. Another step. You don’t charge in — you stalk.”
― Deon Meyer, Devil's Peak

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain for ever a child. For what is the value of a human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”
― Deon Meyer, Fever: Epic story of rebuilding civilization after a world-ruining virus

“Wilt u een gorilla of een onzichtbare?”
― Deon Meyer, Onzichtbaar

“Yeah, of course I hated too. Facebook most of all, if you have to know. Facebook. Hated it. For me that was the epitome of what was wrong with society. ’Cause why, you’ve got all these friends, but they’re not real friends, just people you can post photos for, of your breakfast and your lunch and your cute kitty. I ask you. Like they really cared. They only cared because they needed you as an audience. Facebook friends were an audience, that’s all. And it made me sick how they all needed an audience. Society got so impersonal, so don’t-care, till we had to validate ourselves on something like Facebook, to an audience of people who don’t give a flying . . . Let me just say, that’s sad. Tragic.”
― Deon Meyer, Fever: Epic story of rebuilding civilization after a world-ruining virus

“I must admit that I remain endlessly fascinated by the small crossroads of life, the forks in the road, seldom indicated, rarely a road sign. Only visible in retrospect.”
― Deon Meyer, Dead at Daybreak

“He ought to be in the minuet of life, but he was still fucking around in the adagio.”
― Deon Meyer, The Last Hunt

“Dan begin jy voel soos die hond wat die bus gevang het. Ongemaklik. Want dié groot, vet bus loop skynbaar nie net na bestemming Bevordering nie. Daar is ander plekke waar hy ook kan stop.”
― Deon Meyer, Die vrou in die blou mantel

“Einstein said, “I believe in Spinoza’s god, who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a god who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.”
― Deon Meyer, Fever

“Who’s going to rob a black man on a bicycle?”
― Deon Meyer, Fever A Novel

“aan my twee geskenke gegee: rigting en selfrespek.”
― Deon Meyer, Orion

“If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, then the profits will follow.”
― Deon Meyer, Icarus

“That’s why people become racists, and sexists and terrorists. Because we don’t talk, we don’t listen, because we don’t know, we live only in our own heads.”
― Deon Meyer, Blood Safari

“he was white in a world of affirmative action. Basically fucked.”
― Deon Meyer, Icarus

“You had to suffer first, before you could connect, before you could see we are all just human, irrespective of race, colour, creed.”
― Deon Meyer, Icarus

“Egan. Watse naam is Egan? Hoe kom jy op daai een? Hoe kyk jy vir hierdie baby, jou laaitie, en sê, 'nooit, dis 'n Egan'. Klink soos die naam van 'n alien in die Spielberg movie. Fokken Egan... Egan the Vegan”
― Deon Meyer, 7 dae

“Want die wêreld en die lewe ís magies, Nero. Op ’n manier. Want ons kan planne maak soos ons wil, maar die heelal steur hom nie daaraan nie.”
― Deon Meyer, Koors

“Hennie read the last lines of the pamphlet: “Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
“That’s Emma Lazarus,” said Pa.
“Is that her up there?” asked Hennie and pointed at Melinda Swanevelder in the Volvo.
Pa said no, Emma Lazarus was an American poet. She wrote the poem that is engraved on the Statue of Liberty. The woman in the cab is Melinda Swanevelder. We found her in Vanderkloof.”
― Deon Meyer, Fever A Novel

“Slaan my plat met ’n vars snoek.”
― Deon Meyer, Die ballade van Robbie de Wee en ander verhale

“But it felt as though someone were watching us.”
― Deon Meyer, Fever: Epic story of rebuilding civilization after a world-ruining virus

“Academy. And what a narcotic the drug of positive feedback”
― Deon Meyer, Dead at Daybreak

“Communism. Capitalism. Democracy. Imagined realities, because they only arose in people’s minds, they had no scientific basis.”
― Deon Meyer, Fever: Epic story of rebuilding civilization after a world-ruining virus

“Ik wilde haar weer horen lachen. Sterker nog: ik wilde de lach uit haar tevoorschijn toveren, ik wilde de reden zijn waarom die melodie gespeeld werd, want het was de klank van geluk, van tevredenheid, van alles wat goed en mooi was in de wereld.”
― Deon Meyer, Blood Safari