← Vie’s Library
You can boast about anything if it’s all you have. Maybe the less you have, the
summer. You can boast about anything if it’s all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.
Look now—in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be
countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst sin we know. And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, ‘Use it well, use it wisely.’
We put no checks on him. Go out and kill as many of a certain kind or classification of your brothers as you can. And we will reward you for it because it is a violation of your early training.”
So many things are done instinctively, the way a bee makes honey or a fox dips his paws in a stream to fool dogs. A fox can’t say why he does it, and what bee remembers winter or expects it to come again? When
Once in a while there is a man who won’t do what is demanded of him, and do you know what happens? The whole machine devotes itself coldly to the destruction of his difference.
“nearly all men are afraid, and they don’t even know what causes their fear—shadows, perplexities, dangers without names or numbers, fear of a faceless death.
The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in the path or a breath caught at sight of a pretty girl or a fingernail nicked in the garden soil.
He lived in a world shining and fresh and as uninspected as Eden on the sixth day.
His mind plunged like a colt in a happy pasture, and when later the world put up fences he plunged against the wire, and when the final stockade
surrounded him, he plunged right through it and out. And as he was capable of giant joy, so did he harbor huge sorrow, so that when his dog died the world ended.
The Irish do have a despairing quality of gaiety, but they have also a dour and brooding ghost that rides on their shoulders and peers in on their thoughts. Let them laugh too loudly, it sticks a long finger down their throats. They condemn themselves before they are charged, and this makes them defensive always.
His mother explained that his mind was in the clouds, as though this were some singular virtue. When Joe had
Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy—that’s the time that seems long in the memory
it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.
And this is right when you think about
Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience. A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him strange.
To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.
possessed by the devil. She would have been exorcised to cast out the evil spirit, and
Nobody knows why you go to a picnic to be uncomfortable when it is so easy and pleasant to eat at home.
And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories.
It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men.
At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?
Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.
Maybe we all have in us a secret pond where evil and ugly things germinate and grow strong. But this culture is fenced, and the swimming brood climbs up only to fall back. Might it not be that in the dark pools of some men the evil grows strong enough to wriggle over the fence and swim free? Would not such a man be our monster, and are we not related to him in our hidden water? It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.
But some men are friends with the whole world in their hearts, and there are others that hate themselves and spread their hatred around like butter on hot bread.”
“There’s a capacity for appetite,”
Samuel said, “that a whole heaven and earth of cake can’t satisfy.”
You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.”
There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension.
I couldn’t find good enough reasons for killing men and women, nor understand the reasons when they were explained.”
home was a place to sit around or work around, waiting for death the way you might wait for a dreadful picnic.”
It was a Weltschmerz—which we used to call “Welshrats”—the world sadness that rises into the soul like a gas and spreads despair so that you probe for the offending event and can find none.
In human affairs of danger and delicacy successful conclusion is sharply limited by hurry. So often men trip by being in a rush. If one were properly to perform a difficult and subtle act, he should first inspect the end to be achieved and then, once he had accepted the end as desirable, he should forget it completely and concentrate solely on the means. By this method he would not be moved to false action by anxiety or hurry or fear. Very few people learn this.
“Do you have hatred?” “No. No—only a kind of sinking in the heart. Maybe later I’ll sort it out to hatred. There was no interval from loveliness to horror, you see. I’m confused, confused.”
Was she very beautiful, Samuel?” “To you she was because you built her. I don’t think you ever saw her—only your own creation.”
And I will warn you now that not their blood but your suspicion might build evil in them. They will be what you expect of them.” “But their blood—” “I don’t very much believe in blood,” said Samuel. “I think when a man finds good or bad in his children he is seeing only what he planted in them after they cleared the womb.”
“I’ve wondered why a man of your knowledge would work a desert hill place.” “It’s because I haven’t courage,” said
could never quite take the responsibility.
But it’s nice for a mediocre man to know that greatness must be the loneliest state in the world.”
No. I believe when you come to that responsibility the hugeness and you are alone to make your choice. On one side you have warmth and companionship and sweet understanding, and on the other—cold,
lonely greatness. There you make your choice. I’m glad I chose mediocrity,
Lord, how the day passes! It’s like a life—so quickly when we don’t watch it and so slowly when we do. No,”
“No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us. What a great burden of guilt men have!”
do I, so does everyone. We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way.”
The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection.
And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt—and there is the story of mankind.
And I feel that a man is a very important thing—maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed—because ‘Thou mayest.’
“Maybe everyone is too rich. I have noticed that there is no dissatisfaction like that of the rich. Feed a man, clothe him, put him in a good house, and he will die of despair.”
‘Thou mayest, Thou mayest!’ What glory! It is true that we are weak and sick and quarrelsome, but if that is all we ever were, we would, millenniums ago, have disappeared from the face of the earth. A few remnants of fossilized jawbone, some
broken teeth in strata of limestone, would be the only mark man would have left of his existence in the world. But the choice, Lee, the choice of winning! I had never understood it or accepted it before. Do you see now why I told Adam tonight? I exercised the choice. Maybe I was wrong, but by telling him I also forced him to live or get off the pot. What is that word, Lee?”
Then the warmth melted through into the cold concealed box where he stored forbidden thoughts, and the thoughts came timidly up to the surface like children who do not know whether they will be received.
He smiled at her as a man might smile at a memory.
I believe there are techniques of the human mind whereby, in its dark deep, problems are examined, rejected or accepted. Such activities sometimes concern facets a man does not know he has. How often one goes to sleep troubled and full of pain, not knowing
what causes the travail, and in the morning a whole new direction and a clearness is there, maybe the result of the black reasoning. And again there are mornings when ecstasy bubbles in the blood, and the stomach and chest are tight and electric with joy, and nothing in the thoughts to justify it or cause it.
strong woman, and I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is almost indestructible.”
It is easy to find a logical and virtuous reason for not doing what you don’t want to do.
In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil.
I hope I’m not so small-souled as to take satisfaction in being missed.”
And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist—or, worse, will
draw it forth from people simply by expecting it.
It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.
“My father made a mold and forced me into it,” Adam said. “I was a bad casting but I couldn’t be remelted. Nobody can be remelted. And so I remained a bad casting.”
You see, there’s a responsibility in being a person. It’s more than just taking up space where air would be. What are you like?”
thought shot into her mind, shining and winking like a meteor. The thought flashed and went out so quickly that she had to stop what she was doing to try to find it.
“One must be very rich to dress as badly as you do. The poor are forced to dress well.”
“I’m not being funny. He doesn’t think about me. He’s made someone up, and it’s like he put my skin on her. I’m not like that—not like the made-up one.”
“I’m always afraid he’ll see something in me that isn’t in the one he made up. I’ll get mad or I’ll smell bad—or
“I don’t see how it could be any other way,” said Lee. “Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn’t in time.”
Hate cannot live alone. It must have love as a trigger, a goad, or a stimulant. Joe early developed a gentle protective
Hate cannot live alone. It must have love as a trigger, a goad, or a stimulant.
helpless, the hopeless sorrow, that comes down over a family with the telegram. Nothing to say, nothing to do, and only one hope—I hope he didn’t suffer—and what a forlorn and last-choice hope that is.
But Adam’s pictures were frozen. There was no motion or emotion in them—illustrations in the pages of a book, and not very well drawn.
“All great and precious things are lonely.”
There was pride in it, and relief too. The split second has been growing more and more important to us. And as human activities become more and more intermeshed and integrated, the split tenth of a second will emerge, and then a new name must be made for the split hundredth, until one day, although I don’t believe it, we’ll say, “Oh, the hell with it. What’s wrong with
But it isn’t silly, this preoccupation with small time units. One thing late or early can disrupt everything around it, and the disturbance runs outward in bands like the waves from a dropped stone in a quiet pool.
He fought the quiet hateful brain down and it slipped aside and went about its work. He fought it more weakly, for hate was seeping all through his body, poisoning every nerve. He could feel himself losing control.
And better than all, when she stopped being, she never would have been.
He had no resistance against sorrow and no device to protect himself against shame.
And this had to be done even though Cal sacrificed himself. And then the idea of sacrifice took hold of him the way it does with all guilty-feeling men. A sacrifice might reach Aron and bring him back.
Abra had long ago given up having any private things in her room, even any personal thing. This was of such long standing that Abra did not think of her room as a private place. Her privacies were of the mind.
“You know, I haven’t wished for many things in my life,” he began. “I learned very early not to wish for things. Wishing just brought earned disappointment.”