Fear

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 58 of 529 · 20 per page

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  So shall I release for you the King of the Jews?” [Matt 27:15–26 ; Mark 15:6–15 ; Luke 23:18–25 ] 40 Then they all shouted back again, “Not this Man, but Barabbas!” Now Barabbas was a g robber. John 19 The Crown of Thorns 1 S O THEN Pilate took Jesus and had Him a scourged (flogged, whipped). 2 And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on His head, and put a purple robe around Him; [Matt 27:27–30 ; Mark 15:16–19 ] 3 and they kept coming up to Him, saying [mockingly], “Hail, King of the Jews [Good health! Peace! Long life to you, King of the Jews]!” And they slapped Him in the face . [Is 53:3 , 5 , 7 ] 4 Then Pilate came out again and said to them, “Look, I am bringing Him out to you so that you may know that I find no guilt in Him [no crime, no cause for an accusation].” 5 So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, and Pilate said to them, “Look! The Man!” 6 When the chief priests and officers saw Him, they shouted, “Crucify [Him]! Crucify [Him]!” Pilate said to them, “Take Him yourselves and crucify Him, for I find no guilt in Him [no crime, no cause for an accusation].” [Luke 23:4 , 14 , 22 ; John 18:38 ; 19:4 ] 7 The Jews answered him, “We have a law [regarding blasphemy], and according to that law He should die, because He made Himself out to be the Son of God.” [Lev 24:16 ] 8 So when Pilate heard this said, he was [even] more b alarmed and afraid. 9 He went into the Praetorium again and said to Jesus, “Where are You from?” But Jesus did not answer him. [Is 53:7 ] 10 So Pilate said to Him, “You do not speak to me? Do You not know that I have authority to release You, and I have authority to crucify You?” 11 Jesus answered, “You would have no authority over Me at all if it had not been given to you from above. For this reason the sin and guilt of the c one who handed Me over to you is greater [than your own].” 12 As a result of this, Pilate kept making efforts to release Him, but the Jews kept screaming, “d If you release this Man, you are no friend of Caesar! Anyone who makes himself out [to be] a king opposes Caesar [and rebels against the emperor]!” 13 When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out, and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called e The Pavement, but in f Hebrew, Gabbatha. 14 Now it was the day of Preparation for the g Passover [week], and it was about the sixth hour.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  5 ‘EVERY RAVINE SHALL BE FILLED UP , AND EVERY MOUNTAIN AND HILL SHALL BE LEVELED ; AND THE CROOKED [places] SHALL BE MADE STRAIGHT , AND THE ROUGH ROADS SMOOTH ; 6 AND e ALL MANKIND SHALL SEE THE SALVATION OF GOD .’ ” [Is 40:3–5 ] 7 So he began saying to the crowds who were coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of f vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath [of God that is] to come? 8 “Therefore produce fruit that is worthy of [and consistent with your] repentance [that is, live changed lives, turn from sin and seek God and His righteousness]. And do not even begin to say to yourselves [as a defense], ‘We have Abraham for our father [and so our heritage assures us of salvation]’; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children (descendants) for Abraham [for God can replace the unrepentant, regardless of their heritage, with those who are obedient]. [Matt 3:9 ] 9 “Even now the axe [of God’s judgment] is swinging toward the root of the trees; so every tree that does not produce good fruit is being cut down and thrown into the fire.” 10 The crowds asked him, “Then what are we to do?” 11 And John replied, “The man who has two tunics is to share with him who has none; and he who has food is to do the same.” 12 Even some tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked, “Teacher, what are we to do?” 13 And he told them, “Collect no more than the fixed amount you have been ordered to [collect].” 14 Some soldiers asked him, “And what about us, what are we to do?” And he replied to them, “Do not g extort money from anyone or harass or blackmail anyone, and be satisfied with your wages.” 15 Now the people were in a state of expectation, and all were wondering in their hearts about John, as to whether he was the Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed). 16 John answered them all by saying, “As for me, I baptize you [only] h with water; but One who is mightier [more powerful, more noble] than I is coming, and I am not fit to untie the strap of His sandals [even as His slave]. He will baptize you [who truly repent] with the Holy Spirit and [you who remain unrepentant] with i fire. [Matt 3:11 ] 17 “His j winnowing fork is in His hand to thoroughly clear His threshing floor, and to gather the wheat (believers) into His barn (kingdom); but He will burn up the chaff (the unrepentant) with unquenchable fire.” 18 So with many other appeals and various admonitions John preached the good news (gospel) to the people.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  I am not going up to this feast because My time has not yet fully come.” 9 Having said these things to them, He stayed behind in Galilee. 10 But [afterward], when His brothers had gone up to the feast, He went up too, not publicly [with a caravan], but quietly [because He did not want to be noticed]. 11 So the Jews kept looking for Him at the feast and asking, “Where is He?” 12 There was a lot of whispered discussion and murmuring among the crowds about Him. Some were saying, “He is a good man”; others said, “No, on the contrary, He misleads the people [giving them false ideas].” 13 Yet no one was speaking out openly and freely about Him for fear of [the leaders of] the Jews. 14 When the feast was already half over, Jesus went up into the temple [court] and began to teach. 15 Then the Jews were perplexed. They said, “How c did this man become learned [so versed in the Scriptures and theology] d without formal training?” 16 Jesus answered them by saying, “My teaching is not My own, but His who sent Me. 17 “If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know whether the teaching is of God or whether I speak on My own accord and by My own authority. 18 “He who speaks on his own accord seeks glory and honor for himself. But He who seeks the glory and the honor of the One who sent Him, He is true, and there is no unrighteousness or deception in Him. 19 “Did not Moses give you the Law? And yet not one of you keeps the Law. Why do you want to kill Me [for not keeping it]?” 20 The crowd answered, “You have a demon [You are out of Your mind]! Who wants to kill You?” 21 Jesus replied, “I did one e work, and you are all astounded. [John 5:1–9 ] 22 “For this reason Moses has given you [God’s law regarding] circumcision (not that it originated with Moses, but with the patriarchs) and you circumcise a man [even] on the Sabbath. 23 “If, to avoid breaking the Law of Moses, a man undergoes f circumcision on the Sabbath, why are you angry with Me for making a man’s whole body well on the Sabbath? 24 “Do not judge by appearance [superficially and arrogantly], but judge fairly and righteously.” 25 Then some of the people of Jerusalem said, “Is this not the Man they want to kill? 26 “Look, He is speaking publicly, and they say nothing to Him! Is it possible that the rulers really know that this is the Christ?

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  Our life today is what we dreamed it would be aeons ago. Always it has a double thread running through it, just as in the age-old dream. Always fear and wish, fear and wish. Never the pure fountain of desire. And so we have and we have not, we are and we are not. In the realm of sex there is a similar kind of sleepwalking and self-delusion at work; here the bifurcation of pure desire into fear and wish has resulted in the creation of a phantasmagorical world in which love plays the role of a chameleon-like scapegoat. Passion is conspicuous by its absence or by monstrous deformations which render it practically unrecognizable. To trace the history of man’s attitude towards sex is like threading a labyrinth whose heart is situated in an unknown planet. There has been so much distortion and suppression, even among primitive peoples, that today it is virtually impossible to say what constitutes a free and healthy attitude. Certainly the glorification of sex, in pagan times, represented no solution of the problem. And, though Christianity ushered in a conception of love superior to any known before, it did not succeed in freeing man sexually. Perhaps we might say that the tyranny of sex was broken through sublimation in love, but the nature of this greater love has been understood and experienced only by a rare few. Only where strict bodily discipline is observed, for the purpose of union or communion with God, has the subject of sex ever been faced squarely. Those who have achieved emancipation by this route have, of course, not only liberated themselves from the tyranny of sex but from all other tyrannies of the flesh. With such individuals, the whole body of desire has become so transfigured that the results obtained have had practically no meaning for the man of the world. Spiritual triumphs, even though they affect the man in the street immediately, concern him little, if at all. He is seeking for a solution of life’s problems on the plane of mirage and delusion; his notions of reality have nothing to do with ultimate effects; he is blind to the permanent changes which take place above and beneath his level of understanding. If we take such a type of being as the Yogi, whose sole concern is with reality, as opposed to the world of illusion, we are bound to concede that he has faced every human problem with the utmost courage and lucidity. Whether he incorporates the sexual or transmutes it to the point of transcendence and obliteration, he is at least one who has attained the vast open spaces of love. If he does not reproduce his kind, he at least gives new meaning to the word birth. In lieu of copulating he creates; in the circle of his influence conflict is stilled and the harmony of a profound peace established.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Presently, Egano returned from fowling and being weary, betook himself to bed, as soon as he had supper, and after him the lady, who left the chamber-door open, as she had promised. Thither, at the appointed hour, came Anichino and softly entering the chamber, shut the door again from within; then, going up to the bed on the side where the lady lay, he put his hand to her breast and found her awake. As soon as she felt him come, she took his hand in both her own and held it fast; then, turning herself about in the bed, she did on such wise that Egano, who was asleep, awoke; whereupon quoth she to him, 'I would not say aught to thee yestereve, for that meseemed thou was weary; but tell me, Egano, so God save thee, whom holdest thou thy best and trustiest servant and him who most loveth thee of those whom thou hast in the house?' 'Wife,' answered Egano, 'what is this whereof thou askest me? Knowest thou it not? I have not nor had aye any in whom I so trusted and whom I loved as I love and trust in Anichino. But why dost thou ask me thereof?' Anichino, seeing Egano awake and hearing talk of himself, was sore afraid lest the lady had a mind to cozen him and offered again and again to draw his hand away, so he might begone; but she held it so fast that he could not win free. Then said she to Egano, 'I will tell thee. I also believed till to-day that he was even such as thou sayest and that he was more loyal to thee than any other, but he hath undeceived me; for that, what while thou wentest a-fowling to-day, he abode here, and whenas it seemed to him time, he was not ashamed to solicit me to yield myself to his pleasures, and I, so I might make thee touch and see this thing and that it might not behove me certify thee thereof with too many proofs, replied that I would well and that this very night, after midnight, I would go into our garden and there await him at the foot of the pine. Now for my part I mean not to go thither; but thou, an thou have a mind to know thy servant's fidelity, thou mayst lightly do it by donning a gown and a veil of mine and going down yonder to wait and see if he will come thither, as I am assured he will.' Egano hearing this, answered, 'Certes, needs must I go see,' and rising, donned one of the lady's gowns, as best he knew in the dark; then, covering his head with a veil, he betook himself to the garden and proceeded to await Anichino at the foot of the pine.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The women, hearing this, began to say, 'Who is there?' But Ruggieri, knowing not the voice, answered not; whereupon they proceeded to call the two young men, who, for that they had overwatched themselves, slept fast and heard nothing of all this. Thereupon the women, waxing more fearful, arose and betaking themselves to the windows, fell a-crying, 'Thieves! Thieves!' At this sundry of the neighbours ran up and made their way, some by the roof and some by one part and some by another, into the house; and the young men also, awaking for the noise, arose and seized Ruggieri, who finding himself there, was in a manner beside himself for wonderment and saw no way of escape. Then they gave him into the hands of the officers of the governor of the city, who had now run thither at the noise and carried him before their chief. The latter, for that he was held of all a very sorry fellow, straightway put him to the question and he confessed to having entered the usurers' house to steal; whereupon the governor thought to let string him up by the neck without delay. The news was all over Salerno by the morning that Ruggieri had been taken in the act of robbing the money-lenders' house, which the lady and her maid hearing, they were filled with such strange and exceeding wonderment that they were like to persuade themselves that they had not done, but had only dreamed of doing, that which they had done overnight; whilst the lady, to boot, was so concerned at the news of the danger wherein Ruggieri was that she was like to go mad. Soon after half tierce[258] the physician, having returned from Malfi and wishing to medicine his patient, called for his prepared water and finding the flagon empty, made a great outcry, saying that nothing could abide as it was in his house. The lady, who was troubled with another great chagrin, answered angrily, saying 'What wouldst thou say, doctor, of grave matter, whenas thou makest such an outcry anent a flagonlet of water overset? Is there no more water to be found in the world?' 'Wife,' rejoined the physician, 'thou thinkest this was common water; it was not so; nay, it was a water prepared to cause sleep'; and told her for what occasion he had made it. When she heard this, she understood forthright that Ruggieri had drunken the opiate and had therefore appeared to them dead and said to her husband, 'Doctor, we knew it not; wherefore do you make yourself some more'; and the physician, accordingly, seeing he might not do otherwise, let make thereof anew. [Footnote 258: _i.e._ about half-past seven a.m.]

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  Soon after I entered the University of Michigan, I joined my father’s fraternity, Alpha Tau, simply to please him. Friends of mine who complained about the “lack of communication” with their fathers always amazed me, since it never occurred to me to hope for or even want from mine an exchange of confidences. He lectured me about the impersonal things that interested him—stocks and bonds, insurance policies, politics, civil engineering principles—and I provided him with a simulacrum of the son he wanted: I joined his club; in the summers I escorted debutantes to balls as he wanted me to; and I wore the clothes he chose. I couldn’t, of course, be the athletic or heterosexual man he wanted. He knew I was homosexual, although we never discussed it. I’d told him in a letter in order to get the money I needed to see the shrink, Dr. O’Reilly. The next summer I spent with Dad at his Michigan cottage. My stepmother and sister and the maid weren’t allowed to join us until the end of the season. Until then I was alone with my father. He put me on a strict regime of yardwork, mainly raking the pine needles that formed a thick carpet from top to bottom of the slope on which the house was built. When I asked him what possible reason there could be for removing the needles, he turned red, his already thin lips grew thinner, and he said, “Goddamn it, you’ll do what the hell I goddam well tell you to do.” When my stepmother finally arrived, she revealed that my father thought he would drive the queerness out of me through manual labor. For weeks we had circled each other wordlessly, my father up on a ladder, me with my eternal rake and wheelbarrow, his anger between us, mysterious as the stone the Muslims worship. Since he knew how to cook nothing but steaks, every night we’d sit wordlessly over plates overflowing with fat and blood. He’d read the newspaper. I couldn’t guess why he hated me so much. In the past I’d always welcomed his indifference, since that was what I felt for him, though I took care to hide it, but his program of hatred frightened me. My stepmother told me my mother had accused my father over the phone of having brought about my “sickness” through his absence; my father was countering the charge by administering to me his grim discipline. Although I’d finally done something to grab his attention, that same thing repelled him. My stepmother said, “Your poor dad, this thing is killing him, he stays awake all night worrying; he was so angry at first I was afraid he’d kill you.” At college I was finally free. I’d smoldered against other people’s rules for so long that now I felt freedom as a form of loneliness, a disturbing withdrawal of love. Certainly I was lonely and I wanted friends.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  He smelled funny and I was afraid the driver might complain, but no, we moved through the unpeopled streets in silence. The windshield wipers beat out a slow two-quarter rhythm, the first stroke on the G below middle C, the second an octave above, played over brushes on cymbals: the rain sizzling under our tires. The irrigationist’s office was in the Loop between two movie theaters and above a taffy-candy apple stand. Wearing a dirty white nylon uniform half- snapped up the back, he let us in through the smoked-glass door. He showed us through a dim room. We walked on dirty linoleum imbued with the smell of Lysol and cigarettes. Lou’s wobbly legs didn’t surprise the man. We went into a smaller room dominated by a raised surgical table and gleaming aluminum tubes coming out of a grotty tile wall over a sink. Whining like a sleepy child, Lou undressed and crawled onto the table, his practiced rump rising automatically in the air. Pedantically I explained to the irrigationist that Lou’s peristaltic motion had stopped, that for some reason hospitals no longer possessed the necessary equipment, that— “Sure, sure.” The man’s yellow-toothed chuckle and the familiarity with which he patted Lou’s butt tipped me off. Lou had been here before. The man extinguished his cigarette and set to work. Lou looked up at him with eyes swimming around a fixed point of longing. This man had—or could do—

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  16 Thus says the LORD , “Stand by the roads and look; ask for the ancient paths, Where the good way is; then walk in it, And you will find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it!’ [Matt 11:29 ] 17 “I have set watchmen (prophets) over you, Saying, ‘Listen and pay attention to the [warning] sound of the trumpet!’ But they said, ‘We will not listen.’ 18 “Therefore hear, O [Gentile] nations, And see, O congregation, what [vengeful act] is to be done to them. 19 “Hear, O earth: behold, I am bringing disaster on this people, The fruit of their schemes, Because they have not listened and paid attention to My words, And as for My law, they have rejected it also. 20 “For what purpose does frankincense come to Me from b Sheba And the sweet cane from a distant land? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable And your sacrifices are not sweet and pleasing to Me.” 21 Therefore, thus says the LORD , “Behold, I am laying stumbling blocks before this people. The fathers and the sons together Will stumble against them; The neighbor and his friend will perish.” The Enemy from the North 22 Thus says the LORD , “Behold, a people is coming from the north country, And a great nation shall be stirred up and put into action from the remote parts of the earth. 23 “They seize bow and spear; They are cruel and inhuman and have no mercy. Their voice sounds like the roaring sea; They ride [in formation] on horses, Arrayed as a man for battle Against you, O Daughter of Zion (Jerusalem)!” 24 We have heard the report of it; Our hands become limp and helpless. Anguish has gripped us, Pain like that of a woman in childbirth. 25 Do not go out into the field Nor walk on the road, For the enemy is armed with the sword; Terror is on every side. 26 O daughter of my people [says Jeremiah], Clothe yourself in sackcloth and wallow in ashes; Mourn [aloud] as for an only son, A most bitter cry [of sorrow and regret], For suddenly the destroyer will come upon us [on both prophet and people]. 27 “I [the LORD ] have set you as an assayer [O Jeremiah] and as a tester [of the ore] of My people, That you may know and analyze their acts.” 28 They are all the worst [kind] of [stiff-necked, godless] rebels, Going around spreading slander. They are [not gold and silver ore, but] bronze and iron; They are all corrupt. 29 The bellows blow fiercely, The lead is consumed by the fire; In vain they continue refining, But the wicked are not separated and removed. 30 They call them rejected silver [only dross, without value], Because the LORD has rejected them.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  This is how it shall be with Pharaoh and all his hordes!” ’ says the Lord GOD .” [Ezek 28:10 ; 32:19 ] Ezekiel 32 Dirge for Pharaoh and Egypt 1 I N THE twelfth year [after King Jehoiachin of Judah was taken into exile by the king of Babylon], in the twelfth month, on the first of the month, the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 2 “Son of man, take up a dirge (funeral poem to be sung) over Pharaoh king of Egypt and say to him, ‘You have compared yourself to a young lion among the nations, But you are like a monster in the seas; You burst into your rivers And disturbed and muddied the waters with your feet And fouled their rivers [the source of their prosperity].’ ” 3 Thus says the Lord GOD , “I will spread out My net over you With a company of many nations, And they will bring you up in My net. 4 “Then I will leave you (Egypt) on the land; I will hurl you on the open field. And I will make all the birds of the sky dwell on you, And I will satisfy the animals of all the earth with you. 5 “And I will scatter your flesh on the mountains And fill the valleys with your debris [your corpses and their worms]. 6 “I will also water the land with your flowing blood As far as the mountains, And the ravines will be full of you. 7 “And when I extinguish you, I will cover the heavens [of Egypt] and darken their stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud And the moon will not give its light. 8 “All the bright lights in the heavens I will darken over you And I will place darkness on your land,” Says the Lord GOD . 9 “I will also put fear into the hearts of many peoples when I bring your destruction [and captivity] among the nations, into countries which you have not known. 10 “I will make many peoples appalled at you [at your judgment and your defeat], and their kings will be horribly afraid of you when I brandish My sword [of judgment] before them; they will tremble and shudder every moment, every man for his own life, on the day of your downfall.” 11 For thus says the Lord GOD , “The sword of the king of Babylon will come on you. 12 “I will make your horde [of people] fall by the swords of the mighty—all of them are tyrants among the nations, And they will devastate the pride and presumption of Egypt, And all its hordes will be destroyed. 13 “I will also destroy all its cattle from beside its great waters; And the foot of man will not muddy them anymore Nor will the hoofs of the animals muddy them.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  On another trip, Terrell was forced to get off a train and secure arrangements in Texas. Knowing no one, she asked the conductor for help. Again, she was mistaken for a white woman, and he urged her to go to the hotel. Terrell chose to pass and was able to do so without incident. But she remembered feeling great “apprehension and fear” at being caught. Terrell’s unintentional passing on the train had acted as a form of protection for her, entitling her to the best treatment. In future travels, she often made the choice to pass—not on short trips, but certainly on long journeys. She remarks, “I felt it was my duty to my family, to myself, and to the audience I had been invited to address to keep as fit as possible by taking the proper rest, so that I could give the people the very best I had to offer.”79 As ironic as her choice was to pass while traveling to do race work, Terrell thought it had a worthy justification: I taught my daughters they were doing their Heavenly Father a service when they prevented anybody from treating His children with injustice, scorn, or contempt solely on account of color or race. I taught them also they were justified in using any scheme, not actually criminal or illegal, to secure for themselves what representatives of other racial groups enjoyed, but of which they would be deprived on account of their African descent. I impressed upon them that they would perpetrate a great injustice upon themselves if they failed to take advantage of any good thing which they had the right to enjoy, simply because certain people had the power to deprive them of it by making arbitrary and unjust laws.80 Passing and using light-skinned privilege to help others get access to segregated spaces constituted a form of proper, dignified agitation against “arbitrary and unjust laws.” It is, thus, with humor that she recounted several instances of her daughter passing at a local theater while using the privilege to get her other, often darker-skinned friends admitted along with her. Terrell clearly distinguishes passing as a form of protest from passing done by those who “cross the color line,” never to return. She viewed her moments of passing not as deliberate attempts to misrepresent herself, but rather as opportunities to capitalize upon the prejudices of others who were “obsessed with race prejudice.”81

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  Everyone including the parents was dead drunk, a knife flashed out of a pocket, Lou was spurting blood, his mother was shrieking above the soprano, ushers and then the police were coming through the door, the orchestra was breaking up and bleeping into silence, the audience was in an uproar, and the houselights came up. “That’s when I got this,” Lou said, pointing to his stomach scar. “Not from my brother. I lost so much blood I passed out, and when I woke up I was in Methodist Central. A stupid cunt of a nurse had left me with a thermometer in my mouth, she’d gone out of the room—can you imagine, you never do that with a patient in a coma—and I knew it could be the basis for a really stiff malpractice suit, so I just chewed it up very slowly and swallowed it, all the broken glass and the mercury too, and I knew I’d either die, which was cool, or wake up rich enough to leave my parents for good. I woke up. They’d sliced me open and removed several feet of gut, that’s why I have to eat so often now, otherwise the food goes right through me—” “But you don’t eat!” I wailed. “That’s precisely—” Lou silenced me by laying his open hand over my mouth; then he played a little tune on my lips with his fingers. “But I hadn’t counted on my habit, which was becoming so expensive that before I got the settlement money I had to rob my father’s house, which triggered some goddam new alarm he’d installed since I’d split, so I was nabbed, the fuzz found the tracks on my arms, it was all pretty bogue so the only way out of a sentence was to go back to the same bughouse.” I don’t know how aware Lou was of the sexual longing he awakened in me, but as he told me his story, he kept hitching me tighter and tighter in his embrace. Or he used me as a guitar to strum or a flute to pipe, something inert but expressive he could play. “Then my brother killed himself—he was seeing a woman in town and only visiting the hospital every afternoon, and the woman, a local girl, couldn’t take him anymore, he was too crazy for her, so he O.D.ed, maybe he wasn’t even intending to die, just shake her up.” Although I wanted to comfort him, or suggest through gestures that he, at least, was safe from such a fate, safe in my arms, I knew there was no room for me in this story. “That was when I fell in love with Charlie, the pianist you met, he’d been a child prodigy, he’d played with the Cleveland and the New York Philharmonic, and then when he was a teenager, my age, he couldn’t take the responsibility and he, too, picked up a habit, he got busted.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  They look like they’re going to pop out. And the cute way his teeth are gapped. He’s a real little dynamo. And that baby skin—I’ll bet he’s smooth all over. Well, I may be finding out tonight.” “Aren’t you going too fast? I think you’ve got sex on the brain,” I muttered. “And you don’t?” I pinched my mouth sourly and said, “Chinese is not exactly an easy major, Annie.” We fell into silence as we squeaked our way through the black sludge. The wind blew a shelf of snow off a low eave. “Are you jealous?” she asked. I glanced over and I could see from her reined-in smile and nearly crossed eyes that she wanted me to say yes. I ducked out by taking a higher philosophical line: “I’m not sure what jealousy is.” Then, bearing down on her as O’Reilly might: “Why are you so eager to wound me? Have I become a substitute father for you, someone who tortures you (in my case by not sleeping with you) and whom you must punish because you could never punish your real father?” And we were off. She and I ascribed the most appalling motives to each other out of some seemingly scientific zeal, but unlike a real scientific proposition, which can be verified or at least negated, ours submitted to no proof, since the very things being discussed were unconscious, hence unknowable. I say “things” because I hesitate to speak of them as feelings. An “unconscious feeling” strikes me as an impossibility; the one thing we know for sure is what we are feeling. At least now I believe that no one else can correct our feelings; they are pure, incorrigible. Always, at the onset of such a conversation, I had the half-thrilling, half-dreadful sensation of being cranked up to the first, highest hill of a roller coaster. We were scaring each other (“You want to castrate me,” or, “Have you looked at your incestuous feelings toward me?”), but the mutual attention was flattering, as when a lovely palm reader holds your hand, looks into your eyes, and predicts tragic eventualities. There was also a Talmudic fascination about the exercise. If the real horror of living is its failure to mean, to accumulate, then our constant decoding was a comfort, for it found design everywhere—still better, a design of one’s own making. It was easier for us to accept that we were sick than to acknowledge that we were powerless and life vapid. Of course, we would have been insulted if someone had accused us of cheating on an exam or confounding lie and lay, but we smiled charmingly when charged with wanting to murder our father—smiled and shrugged our shoulders. The attribution of Sophoclean passions to ditherers could only be heartening. William Everett Hunton was one of the first handsome homosexuals I’d ever met, a small, neatly made little guy who would flounce and languish around me but turn gravely masculine around the other law students.

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  In another, a flight attendant was punched multiple times and had several teeth chipped. * I asked a librarian friend of mine about this after the call and she said that, like any service-type job, she had to deal with angry patrons sometimes. She also told me that she had felt the same uptick in hostility as the person who called me. * People are sometimes surprised to learn that I put myself in this category. While I am unlikely to express my anger in a hostile or aggressive way, I find myself frequently angry about a variety of social issues. * I heard from more than one person that they found reading my last book personally challenging for this very reason. They told me they had started to see the harm they might be doing to themselves and others, and seeing that harm made introspection really scary for them. PART ONE UNDERSTANDING ANGRY PEOPLE CHAPTER 1 AN ANGRY PERSON OR A PERSON WHO IS ANGRY? Anger Can Be Two Things Anger can be an emotion – a feeling state – that we are all capable of experiencing. In this case, anger can be described as the psychological reaction to injustice, poor treatment, or having our goals blocked. It’s an emotional desire to strike out at the person who wronged you or at the thing getting in your way. Like any emotion, it is associated with a relatively specific set of thoughts, physiological experiences, and behaviors. At the same time, though, anger can be thought of as a personality trait. Here, we’re describing a relatively consistent pattern of angry feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Someone with an angry personality tends to get mad more often than most people, not necessarily because they encounter more provocations, but because they find things provoking that others do not. Like any personality trait, it isn’t 100 per cent consistent. Just as anxious people are capable of moments without fear or nervousness, angry people are capable of moments without rage. Case Study: Izzy – “Who he is as an angry person and who he is when he’s not angry are very different” I spoke with a woman named Izzy* who I met through social media. She reached out in response to a post where I asked for people who considered themselves angry or who had experience with an angry person. My short conversation with her revealed her to be a deeply insightful person, understanding her motivations and the motivations of those around her.

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  As a child I had been plagued with chronic sinusitis, and every winter my mother took me to Dr. Davis, an otolaryngologist, for a sinus draining and flushing. I hated his yellow teeth and his fishy eye, which peered at me through the center of the circular mirror attached to the headband otolaryngologists used to wear. As he inserted a cannula into my sinus foramen, I felt a sharp pain and then heard a loud whooooosh — the same whooooosh I heard in the dream —as the injected saline flushed out my sinus. Looking at the quivering, disgusting mess of pus in the chrome drainage pan, I thought some of my brain had been washed out. In my first dream in analysis, that real-life horror had blended with my fear that shameful and disgusting thoughts would come out of me on the analytic couch. I rene and I worked hard on her first dream. “So you hadn’t read either text,” I began, “ especially not the old one.” “Yes, yes, I expected you to ask about that. I hadn’t read either text, but I especially hadn’t read the ancient one.” “Any hunches about the meaning of the two texts in your life?” “Hardly a hunch,” Irene replied. “I know exactly what they mean.” I waited for her to go on but she simply sat in silence, looking out the window. I had not yet gotten used to Irene’s irritating trait of not volunteering a conclusion unless I explicitly requested it. Annoyed, I let the silence last a minute or two. Finally I obliged: “And the meaning of the two texts, Irene, is—” “My brother’s death, when I was twenty, was the ancient text. My husband’s death to come is the modern text.” “So the dream is telling us that you may not be able to deal with your husband’s death until you deal first with your brother’s.” “You got it. Precisely.” The content that we dealt with was illuminating, but the process (that is, the nature of the relationship between us) was confrontational and highly charged, and ultimately the work on our relationship was to be the true source of healing. In one session, our discussion of a dream about a wall of bodies separating the two of us led to an anguished outburst: “What I mean is, how can you understand me? Your life’s unreal—warm, cozy, innocent. Like this office.” She pointed to my packed bookshelves behind her and to the scarlet Japanese maple blazing just outside the window. “The only thing missing are some chintz cushions, a fireplace, and a crackling wood fire. Your family surrounds you—all in the same town. An unbroken family circle. What can you really know of loss? Do you think you’d handle it any better? Suppose your wife or one of your children was to die right now? How would you do? Even that smug striped shirt of yours—I hate it. Every time you wear it, I wince.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  By the way, I’ve read of some interesting hormone treatments for your problem they’re experimenting with in England; they implant female hormones in your leg through a simple operation and—” “Female?” “Yes, because estrogens neutralize your sex drive altogether; they neuter you and soon you’re free to lead a normal life.” Her right hand made a small rounded motion in the air when she said the word normal. I could see the pure technology of the hormone pack appealed to her practical side. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, but a sudden chill grasped me, exactly as though my lungs were being squeezed by cold hands. My mother went on to ask if I thought I should be put in a psychiatric hospital—and the hands squeezed tighter. It occurred to me that this woman, who was as familiar and shameful to me as my own body, could take it into her head to lock me up. After all, I wasn’t disobliging her in a mild, acceptable way, choosing chemistry rather than physics. No, to her I was a sort of criminal; I’d chosen crime, sex crime. I wanted to be heterosexual, or so I told myself. As a budding writer, I knew I’d never be able to give a convincing account of marriage, birth, parental love, conjugal intimacy, the spicy anguish of adultery—none of the great occasions—until I’d rid myself of this malady which was so narrowing. O’Reilly had warned me that homosexuality would condemn me to an embalmed adolescence, that I’d never grow out of a stale narcissism. And yet something wild and free in me didn’t want to give in to them, the big baggy grown-ups. No, if I were perfectly honest (and I couldn’t be, I lacked the necessary confidence), I’d have to admit that there was a world run by women and feminized men (not effeminate but feminized men) that I wanted to escape, the world of mild suburban couples, his and her necks equally thick and creased, their white hair similarly cropped. The hard hot penis I grabbed for under the toilet-stall partition or the slow wink of a drag queen looking back at me over her ratty fox neckpiece just before she turned the corner—these glimpses piqued my craving for freedom, despite my yearning after respectability. I felt I owed nothing to anyone. My only job was to dodge out of the crossfire. Homosexuality did not constitute a society, just a malady, although unlike many other maladies it was a shameful one—a venereal disease. Could one be loyal to syphilis? And yet syphilis was not a desire one pursued; once contracted, it left nothing else to be done. But a homosexual could be condemned precisely because

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  When the police arrived and asked Sarah what she thought they should do, Sarah said, “I’m not going to ask you to physically remove this person from a theater full of children, including his own.” The show was almost over so they were going to let things go and just get through it. The problem, though, was that there was a special event after the show where some attendees could meet and talk with the performers. It was clear that this particular person was planning on attending this event too, so he wasn’t leaving. Sarah asked the police to ask him to wait outside. He was escorted outside but then ended up waiting by the windows and looking through at Sarah and the other staff. She likened him to caged animal, stalking back and forth across the window like a tiger at a zoo. She started to question whether or not she would be safe to leave the building later that day or if she needed the police to walk her to her car. In the end, she said she got through it. She and her staff had a lot of conversations about what they should do different next time, or even if they should keep trying. She cried a lot too. She said she kept coming back to the fact that “they didn’t have to be there. We were offering full refunds.” If people weren’t willing to put on a mask, they could have left without consequence. But she also told me, demonstrating a really impressive ability to empathize and understand the situation from their perspective, “I don’t think their expectations were actually that unreasonable.” Such mask policies, even when in place, weren’t being enforced elsewhere in her community. “Many places they went required masks but then didn’t actually enforce that requirement.” Her patrons probably knew they were supposed to wear masks, but just assumed, like so many other places, it wouldn’t be enforced. Emotional Contagion Sarah’s story is intriguing from a number of perspectives, and we’ll revisit it often throughout the book. But what I find most fascinating in the context of this chapter, is her description of how people were actively trying to rile each other up. Covid wasn’t the only thing that was contagious that day. Their anger was too, and while they were ambivalent about spreading the virus, they were actively trying to spread the rage. Over a decade ago, some students and I worked on a project related to this very topic.34 We provided participants with some vignettes, brief case studies, describing an emotional situation. The participants were to imagine they were going out to eat for a special occasion. They had booked reservations way in advance, but when they got to the restaurant, there was a long line and obvious problems with the reservation system.

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  Such is social media. * Less relevant to this book, there is such a thing as self-directed shoulds that include rules about our own behavior (I should exercise every day, I should get all of this work done). People who engage in self-directed shoulds are more likely to get sad and feel angry at themselves. In fact, data from The Anger Project (www.alltheragescience.com ) shows that 41 per cent of people are extremely likely to get angry with themselves. * My position on guns is undeniably informed by my research on anger and other emotions. Take any emotionally volatile situation, add a gun to it, and you’ve certainly made that situation more dangerous. * When my son was nine years old, he got really upset listening to a podcast where some critics disparaged a movie he had really enjoyed. He had loved it and couldn’t believe that other people didn’t love it too. This is something we expect from children, but we also expect they will grow out of as they develop a more sophisticated understanding of how people experience the world around them. PART TWO TEN STRATEGIES FOR DEALING WITH ANGRY PEOPLE CHAPTER 6 STRATEGY ONE: WORK OUT WHAT YOU REALLY WANT “If he didn’t want to know what I thought, he shouldn’t have asked me” A friend of mine recently told me about a very unpleasant anger-related situation she was having with one of her in-laws. As a family, they were dealing with some complicated health issues that required making some difficult decisions. My friend was asked by her father-in-law what she thought they should do. She was honest with the advice she gave even though she knew he wouldn’t like it. What she hadn’t anticipated, though, was how much he wouldn’t like it and how angry he would become. He was livid. She received an email from him that was exceedingly angry and hostile. He questioned her commitment to their family and told her she had no right to say such things. When she tried to explain that she was just offering her opinion the way he had asked her to, he attacked her again with a second email. This one was even more aggressive. She decided not to respond to that one and he never followed up with her. At the time she told me all of this, her father-in-law had cut off contact with her and though he was still communicating with her husband, he had become very cold to him. She was hurt and scared about what all this might mean to their family. On top of the hurt and fear, though, she was also really mad at him. He had asked her opinion, so she provided it. “If he didn’t want to know what I thought, he shouldn’t have asked me,” she told me. “He didn’t really want my opinion.

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  In fact, about four years ago, I spoke with Dr. Lori Rosenthal, a social psychologist who wrote a chapter on mob violence for the book The Psychology of Good and Evil ,41 about this very question. I was trying to figure out when a group of people goes from being a crowd to a mob. The answer isn’t just that they are angry. You get angry crowds at sporting events. You get them at peaceful protests.* Dr. Rosenthal helped answer this for me. She said: “A mob is a very specific type of crowd. It’s an expressive crowd. The common purpose that they get together around is expressing emotion. Crowds can express emotions in positive ways, but mobs are expressing emotions in negative ways and there’s a connotation of violence… either an intent to commit violence, a likelihood to commit violence, or they are actually committing violence. It’s not a prosocial group.”† Sarah’s patrons didn’t get together that day to express anger and violence. They were there to see a show. But the way they were treating people, the way they were egging each other on, and the fact that violence felt like a real possibility to Sarah and her staff might make that first part moot. Who cares why they were there? What matters is how they felt and acted once they were there. Dr. Rosenthal said something else really interesting that I think is relevant here too. She said: “Generally, in terms of historical research on social behavior, we have defined a crowd as being in physical proximity, but I think in today’s society with our social-media connections, a crowd can actually exist in the virtual world.” I would argue that if a crowd can exist online, a mob can too. Take for example the story of Justine Sacco who in 2013 tweeted out an offensive attempt at a joke about AIDS right before boarding a plane to South Africa. She had fewer than 200 Twitter followers at the time, but in the 11 hours she was on the plane, her tweet was noticed and shared by media outlets and she became the center of a massive Twitterstorm. Since she was on a flight, she was disconnected from Twitter and was unaware of what was happening. She couldn’t apologize or remove the tweet. In that time, an online mob had formed around her offensive and racist tweet. People were hurling cruel insults at her (including a number of slurs), some were calling for her to be fired (which she was), and some writing that they hoped she would get AIDS. One user even acknowledged that a mob had formed and tweeted out a picture of a mob of Simpsons’ characters holding torches. When she landed, she deleted the tweet, along with her Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts.

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  But calling to mind the might of Thy hand and the greatness of Thy compassion, I rose and stood, and my spirit was established in the face of the scourge. The psalmist then continues by saying that he leans on God's grace and that God pardons him. It seems that the lines just quoted describe a crisis in a covenanter's life rather than a confession of God's grace for putting him in the right 'lot'. The covenant was attacked and he was afraid that he was for- saken. If this is true of 4.33-36, the same seems certainly to be true of 4.29f., which is a confession of the sinfulness of a man in the covenant vis a vis God. 99 H. Braun, 'Selbstverstiindnis', Studien, pp. 113, 107. 100 Ibid., pp. 105f. IOI Ibid., p. I 13. 102 Ibid., pp. 109, I 17. 103 Ibid., pp. 110f. We shall return to these last points below. 104 Licht, 'Doctrine', p. 96. The Dead Sea Scrolls [II The 'in' phrases of 4.29( state not so much a plight from which man is saved as a constant truth which is not altered: man, on his own, is iniquitous ('in iniquity') and full of guilty rebellion ('in guilty unfaithfulness') 'until his old age'. He has no righteousness, nor perfection of way, for to God alone belong righteous deeds. Man's way is established only by God (IQH 4.29-31). The closest parallel to this is IQS 11.11f.: 'If I stagger because of the sin of flesh, my justification shall be by the righteousness of God.' 105 In both cases, the point is that man, on his own, is always a sinner. He may at any time 'stumble', which doubtless means to commit an individual transgression, not to relapse into a former sphere. This is a description of the human state from which he is not saved. He never, in this world, moves from the sphere in which, vis a vis God, his actions apart from grace are sins. The 'in iniquity' passage is a statement of human inadequacy and the constant proclivity to sin unless one's steps are established by God. Becker's 'from' passages do not refer to being saved from the basic human conditiun of frailty, in which man is unable to 'stand' or to 'establish his way' or to do any righteous deed; they do not constitute the solutiun to the plight of 4.29[. The 'from' passages refer to being cleansed from transgression and the impurity which is attached to it so that one may join the covenant. The man in 4.29, however, is already in the covenant. Yet he remains 'in iniquity' from the womb to old age.