Quote 1
"When it comes to men and sex, David, nothing surprises me any more. Maybe, for men, hating the woman makes sex more exciting. You are a man, you ought to know. When you have sex with someone strange – when you trap her, hold her down, get her under you, put all your weight on her – isn't it a bit like killing? Pushing the knife in; exiting afterwards, leaving the body behind covered in blood – doesn't it feel like murder, like getting away with murder?" (18.96)
One of the major ways that we encounter sex in Disgrace is as a tool of violence and domination. Lucy gives David a really unsettling image of what sex can be like from a woman's perspective, and it seems pretty clear at this point that David hasn't spent a whole lot of time thinking about it in this way.
Quote 2
"Because I couldn't face one of your eruptions, David, I can't run my life according to whether or not you like what I do. Not any more. You behave as if everything I do is part of the story of your life. You are the main character, I am a minor character who doesn't make an appearance until halfway through. Well, contrary to what you think, people are not divided into major and minor." (22.29)
Here, we get Lucy candidly venting some of her frustrations with David to his face. Here's a girl who has lived in her dad's shadow for a long time and who is ready to make her own life without him.
Quote 3
"I think they have done it before," she resumes, her voice steadier now. "At least the two older ones have. I think they are rapists first and foremost. Stealing things is just incidental. A side-line. I think they do rape." (18.88)
Lucy asserts that these guys are basically every woman's worst nightmare. In her opinion, they aren't out there to rob people or to exercise vengeance over particular racial groups; they're out there to dominate women.
Quote 4
"Wake up, David. This is the country. This is Africa." (15.15)
Think carefully about what Lucy is saying when she says "this is Africa." David is from Johannesburg, and he has lived for many years in Cape Town – doesn't that mean anything? From Lucy's perspective, not a chance. Johannesburg and Cape Town are the two largest cities in South Africa; they are modern, bustling, and unfamiliar with the kinds of problems that face people out in the country. In Lucy's opinion, the country is the real Africa.
Quote 5
"It was so personal," she says. "It was done with such personal hatred. That was what stunned me more than anything. The rest was…expected. But why did they hate me so? I had never set eyes on them."
He waits for more, but there is no more, for the moment. "It was history speaking through them," he offers at last. "A history of wrong. Think of it that way, if it helps. It may have seemed personal, but it wasn't. It came down from the ancestors." (18.62-63)
Here, we get two different explanations for the hatred that Lucy felt from the men who raped her. On one hand, she felt it was an extremely personal act. David suggests, though, that it was a remnant of the injustices that existed in South Africa in the past, under which people like Lucy oppressed people like the attackers.