Hope

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.

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• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Katrina throws her palms up, helplessly. “ve been waiting for you to give me some input. But since you can’t do that, I have to consider ending the pregnancy. It’s not like it sounds like you're going to be a father. Or whatever.” “No.” “No?” “No, don’t end the pregnancy.” He’s fumbling with his words, trying to pull up some semblance of bravery. “This is what I’m saying. You don’t have to be a single mom. I don’t know if I can be a father—but like, I can be a parent.” Katrina drops the stone she’d been fidgeting with. She gives a hard stare. “What’s the distinction?” He still can’t quite find the courage to tell her what he’d offered Reese. His own weaseling shames him, and he sits up straight, as if a physical backbone has some connection to a metaphorical one. “No, but like, I think if I’m going to do this, I need to be back in the trans community or at least have other trans people involved. I need to be with people who understand where I’ve been.” “What are you talking about?” Ames cocks his head in involuntary sheepishness. “Well, I talked to Reese.” “Who?” “Remember that girl I told you about earlier? Reese? My ex? When I used to complain about not knowing how to live she just scoffed at me and said, ‘’m going to live and do like millions of women before me: I’m going to be a mother.’ Our plan had been to become parents. To raise a child. I think if she was part of raising our child, I could do it.” “As our baby’s godmother or something? I don’t think I'd have a problem with that.” “Well, I was thinking of a role closer than that. Like another mother or something.” Katrina holds her breath, the way one does when contemplating the water below from a high dive. There’s a lot roiling just behind that stillness, but Ames can’t read it, so he just goes on, letting his words tumble out. “I believe she will love a child more fiercely than anyone else I’ve ever met. It'll be hard, because she’s trans and I’m...” He searches for the word, and abandons it, “I’m as you know I am— but she’s the type to turn hardship into hardness, like a shield for people she loves. That baby will be safer with her than at the center of a fortress. And I think we could do it with her—parent, I mean. I’ve been trying to feel what I want, and I want to be with you, Katrina. I’m afraid if you end the pregnancy, it'll end our relationship with it. So I want to be a parent with you. And with Reese, I could be a parent without being seen as a father. Maybe only with her.”

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  At any rate, I was forced to take a leave of absence from my job at Booklist to focus on getting my brain straightened out. Before I left, Booklist’s publisher, Bill Ott, wrote me a note that concluded, “Now, more than ever, watch Harvey.” He’d been bothering me for years to watch this old black- and-white movie called Harvey. My dad drove me home to Orlando, where I hadn’t really lived since leaving for boarding school when I was fifteen. I spent a couple weeks in daily therapy sessions, figuring out a medication regimen that worked, and watching a lot of TV, where the news people kept talking about 9/11, the day that changed history. Soon, they were talking about the pre-9/11 world and the post-9/11 world. One night watching cable news, I heard a psychologist say that Americans would organize their memories around that terrible day: before and after. It occurred to me that we almost always measure time in relation to what matters most to us: In the Christian calendar, we measure distance from the birth of Jesus. In the Islamic calendar, time is measured from the hijrah, the Muslim community’s journey from Mecca to Medina. The story I wanted to tell was about young people whose lives are so transformed by an experience that they can only respond by reimagining time itself. I’d stumbled onto a structure that could work for the book, but I had no energy to actually write it. And then I watched Harvey, a movie about a man named Elwood P. Dowd, whose best friend is a six-foot-tall invisible white rabbit named Harvey. Elwood is mentally ill, and it’d be easy to characterize him as worthless, or hopeless, or useless—all the things I felt were true of myself. But Harvey doesn’t see Elwood that way at all—the movie portrays him as kind and loving and even heroic. Now, I don’t believe in epiphanies, but all I can say is this: I woke up the next morning feeling a little better, and in the years since, I have never felt quite as bad as I did before watching Harvey. The medication and therapy did most of the heavy lifting, I’m sure, but Elwood played his part. Within two weeks, I was back in Chicago, back at work, back to being pestered by Ilene about my story. At night and on the weekends, I wrote. On March 1, 2002, I handed Ilene forty single-spaced pages. It was a confusing jumble and only a few paragraphs actually made it to the final book. But Ilene saw potential and worked with me through many drafts over the next year, and then submitted it to publishers on my behalf. Dutton bought it, and after a few months in limbo, Julie Strauss-Gabel eventually became my editor (and has been ever since). Looking for Alaska still had a long way to go: There was no labyrinth of suffering in the manuscript that Julie first read, and no Great Perhaps.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  men were virtually deified after they died. Albert Einstein too had a saintly aura—childlike, unwilling to compromise, lost in his own world. The key is that you must already have some deeply held values; that part cannot be faked, at least not without risking accusations of charlatanry that will destroy your charisma in the long run. The next step is to show, as simply and subtly as possible, that you live what you believe. Finally, the appearance of being mild and unassuming can eventually turn into charisma, as long as you seem completely comfortable with it. The source of Harry Truman's charisma, and even of Abraham Lincoln's, was to appear to be an Everyman. Eloquence. A Charismatic relies on the power of words. The reason is simple: words are the quickest way to create emotional disturbance. They can uplift, elevate, stir anger, without referring to anything real. During the Spanish Civil War, Dolores Gómez Ibarruri, known as La Pasionaria, gave pro-Communist speeches that were so emotionally powerful as to determine several key moments in the war. To bring off this kind of eloquence, it helps if the speaker is as emotional, as caught up in words, as the audience is. Yet eloquence can be learned: the devices La Pasionaria used— 100 • The Art of Seduction catchwords, slogans, rhythmic repetitions, phrases for the audience to repeat—can easily be acquired. Roosevelt, a calm, patrician type, was able to make himself a dynamic speaker, both through his style of delivery, which was slow and hypnotic, and through his brilliant use of imagery, allitera-tion, and biblical rhetoric. The crowds at his rallies were often moved to tears. The slow, authoritative style is often more effective than passion in the long run, for it is more subtly spellbinding, and less tiring. Theatricality. A Charismatic is larger than life, has extra presence. Actors have studied this kind of presence for centuries; they know how to stand on a crowded stage and command attention. Surprisingly, it is not the actor who screams the loudest or gestures the most wildly who works this magic best, but the actor who stays calm, radiating self-assurance. The effect is ruined by trying too hard. It is essential to be self-aware, to have the ability to see yourself as others see you. De Gaulle understood that self-awareness was key to his charisma; in the most turbulent circumstances—the Nazi occupation of France, the national reconstruction after World War II, an army rebellion in Algeria—he retained an Olympian composure that played beautifully against the hysteria of his colleagues. When he spoke, no one could take their eyes off him. Once you know how to command attention this way, heighten the effect by appearing in ceremonial and ritual events that are full of exciting imagery, making you look regal and godlike. Flamboyancy has nothing to do with charisma—it attracts the wrong kind of attention.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  I would say that had switched as early as maybe March of 2001. Much of what readers have responded to about Alaska—last words, the labyrinth of suffering, the Great Perhaps—came out in revision after I’d started working with my brilliant editor at Penguin, Julie Strauss-Gabel. And the most important development in the history of the book, the thing that made it all possible, was my mentor Ilene Cooper proposing a linear time frame of the school year with XX-days before and XX-days after instead of what I was trying to do, which involved jumping around in time for all kind of Important Literary Reasons that in retrospect I find tremendously embarrassing. Ilene told me to put it in chronological order for the sake of the reader’s sanity, and then I started thinking about structure differently. Julie further refined the structure so that it would be mirrored (chronologically, Alaska’s death occurs at the exact midpoint of the novel) and still accurately reflect the calendar year of 2005, when the book is set. Ilene’s insight about the structure of the novel probably came in late 2002. The revisions that changed so much of the rest of the book happened in 2003 and 2004. (Alaska was published in March of 2005.) Can you explain the ending of Looking for Alaska ? When I was writing Alaska , I wanted the end NOT to give us what we want, which is of course to know whether Alaska’s death was a suicide or an accident. I know many readers really want to know what I think happened to Alaska, but I just don’t believe it’s for me to say. In general, I believe that books belong to their readers. I don’t think the author’s voice should be privileged in extratextual conversations. The truth is that in our lives we are all going to encounter questions that should be answered, that deserve to be answered, and yet prove unanswerable. Can we find meaning to life without those answers? Can we find a way to acknowledge the reality (and injustice) of suffering without giving in to hopelessness? Those are the questions I think Miles is confronting at the end, and I wanted to argue that through forgiveness, it is possible to live a full and hopeful life—even if our world is saturated with injustice and loss. Why does the text switch from past to present tense around Alaska’s death? Have you shifted tense in other books? I’m quite fond of tense changes. I used them in Paper Towns . I ALMOST used them in The Fault in Our Stars , but Julie (rightly) talked me out of it. (Originally, TFIOS moved between past and present tense almost every paragraph, which was a bit much.) So when I am telling a story, I switch a lot between past and present tense.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  “Tm sorry,” Ames says. “Actually, my mom was crying on the phone, and then I started crying too. And we were both crying about the same thing—that I did and didn’t have a grandma.” Ames nods. He had a grandma, who was fine, he guessed. His family was a chain he’d voluntarily decoupled from in order to breathe, so he couldn’t quite relate—but now wasn’t the time to say that. “T thought about what you were saying about redemption, and I realized that I felt the same thing. That I had a chance to connect my mother to my child, to relink the maternal line that my birth broke.” Ames couldn’t help but sit up abruptly, suddenly wildly alert. “So you're going to keep the baby?” “Well, that’s the thing. I was talking to my mom. About you and what you proposed. About this woman, Reese. About my career, and my finances, and my time commitments, and what I want in a relationship, and well, so much. We were talking for hours, listening to each other—and you know what she said?” Katrina doesn’t wait for Ames to ask but pushes on. “This is going to sound crazy, but somehow, even though I’m nearly forty, when my mom approves of something, it makes it seem possible, like, not rebellious. You know? Like, when you want to do something wild as a teenager, and you realize your mom also thinks it’s cool, suddenly it’s like, doable?” “Katrina,” Ames cuts in and puts his hand on his sternum to settle himself. He thinks he sees where Katrina is headed, and can’t tell if his sudden anxiety would be better alleviated if he were right or if he were wrong about his suspicion. “I know youre really good at dramatic presentations, but please, the suspense is killing me.” “My mom, well, after we talked about everything, she was like, ‘The one thing I learned raising you—through successes and failures —is that the best way to be a mother is to do so with as many other moms around as possible.’ You laid out a number of options for me to choose from, and the thing is, honestly—what if we had them all? I want my career, I want to build and commit with you, and a child is a lovely time-tested way for that. Meanwhile, you want this woman Reese as your family, and she wants a baby and respect and purpose as a mother; and my mom wants to be a grandma; and you and I could be good to a child, I think, and we all want it to be something redemptive.” Ames waits and Katrina angles her glance at him slightly askance. “So,” she says, “I’m just asking you what my mom asked, as like, a question to explore...But during your time, uh, in the queer world, was it common for people to raise children in a family that is— What do you call it? Something like a triad?” CHAPTER FOUR

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  thinking about you all of the time, and will want to know more about you. Shahrazad was resolved, and would not yield to her Their curiosity will lead them further into your web, until it is too late for father's entreaties. . . . • them to turn back. So the vizier arrayed his daughter in bridal garments This is always the law for the interesting. . . . If one just and decked her with jewels and made ready to knows how to surprise, one always wins the game. The en-announce Shahrazad's ergy of the person involved is temporarily suspended; one wedding to the king. • makes it impossible for her to act. Before saying farewell to her sister, Shahrazad gave —SØREN KIERKEGAARD her these instructions: "When I am received by the king, I shall send for you. Then when the king Keys to Seduction has finished his act with me, you must say: 'Tell me, my sister, some tale of marvel to beguile the Achild is usually a willful, stubborn creature who will deliberately do the opposite of what we ask. But there is one scenario in which chil-night.' Then I will tell you dren will happily give up their usual willfulness: when they are promised a a tale which, if Allah wills, surprise. Perhaps it is a present hidden in a box, a game with an unforesee-shall be the means of our able ending, a journey with an unknown destination, a suspenseful story deliverance. " • The vizier went with his daughter to with a surprise finish. In those moments when children are waiting for a the king. And when the surprise, their willpower is suspended. They are in your thrall for as long as king had taken the maiden you dangle possibility before them. This childish habit is buried deep Shahrazad to his chamber and had lain with her, she within us, and is the source of an elemental human pleasure: being led by a wept and said: "I have a person who knows where they are going, and who takes us on a journey. young sister to whom I (Maybe our joy in being carried along involves a buried memory of being wish to bid farewell." • literally carried, by a parent, when we are small.) The king sent for Dunyazad. When she We get a similar thrill when we watch a movie or read a thriller: we are arrived, she threw her arms in the hands of a director or author who is leading us along, taking us around her sister's neck, through twists and turns. We stay in our seats, we turn the pages, happily and seated herself by her side. • Then Dunyazad enslaved by the suspense. It is the pleasure a woman has in being led by a said to Shahrazad: "Tell

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Katrina throws her palms up, helplessly. “ve been waiting for you to give me some input. But since you can’t do that, I have to consider ending the pregnancy. It’s not like it sounds like you're going to be a father. Or whatever.” “No.” “No?” “No, don’t end the pregnancy.” He’s fumbling with his words, trying to pull up some semblance of bravery. “This is what I’m saying. You don’t have to be a single mom. I don’t know if I can be a father—but like, I can be a parent.” Katrina drops the stone she’d been fidgeting with. She gives a hard stare. “What’s the distinction?” He still can’t quite find the courage to tell her what he’d offered Reese. His own weaseling shames him, and he sits up straight, as if a physical backbone has some connection to a metaphorical one. “No, but like, I think if I’m going to do this, I need to be back in the trans community or at least have other trans people involved. I need to be with people who understand where I’ve been.” “What are you talking about?” Ames cocks his head in involuntary sheepishness. “Well, I talked to Reese.” “Who?” “Remember that girl I told you about earlier? Reese? My ex? When I used to complain about not knowing how to live she just scoffed at me and said, ‘’m going to live and do like millions of women before me: I’m going to be a mother.’ Our plan had been to become parents. To raise a child. I think if she was part of raising our child, I could do it.” “As our baby’s godmother or something? I don’t think I'd have a problem with that.” “Well, I was thinking of a role closer than that. Like another mother or something.” Katrina holds her breath, the way one does when contemplating the water below from a high dive. There’s a lot roiling just behind that stillness, but Ames can’t read it, so he just goes on, letting his words tumble out. “I believe she will love a child more fiercely than anyone else I’ve ever met. It'll be hard, because she’s trans and I’m...” He searches for the word, and abandons it, “I’m as you know I am— but she’s the type to turn hardship into hardness, like a shield for people she loves. That baby will be safer with her than at the center of a fortress. And I think we could do it with her—parent, I mean. I’ve been trying to feel what I want, and I want to be with you, Katrina. I’m afraid if you end the pregnancy, it'll end our relationship with it. So I want to be a parent with you. And with Reese, I could be a parent without being seen as a father. Maybe only with her.”

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  “Look! Forget the house! I’m not talking about a house. I’m saying if we want to break an old pattern, we need to envision a new pattern in its place. If we want to break the pattern of typical two-parent, even queer two-parent nuclear families, we have to think through the logistics of the replacement. I’m not one of those people who thinks all problems get solved by some human-centered design. We're proposing a family, not a tech start-up...but it’s also true that part of being queer can be a design problem. I mean, Jesus, just look at our sex toys.” He had lots of ideas, many abstract thoughts about parenting, and hypothetical solutions to their dilemma. For instance, he suggested that Reese put her name on the baby’s birth certificate, along with Katrina’s, so that Reese would be a legal parent, and he would be a parent by blood, each of them establishing kinship in one way or another. He had so many schemes! Enough that Reese began to suspect that his logistics had become a way for him to avoid emotional realities: an eagerness to fix problems rather than feel them. Here’s the name of a family lawyer who specializes in queer families. Here’s the hormone regimen required in order to induce lactation in trans women. Here’s the prescription necessary from Callen-Lorde: Double the estrogen and progesterone doses to mimic the levels of pregnancy. Here’s an order of domperidone from an online Canadian pharmacy to increase prolactin levels. Katrina would run Ames’s ideas by her mother, which at first alarmed Reese, then slowly she began to feel good about it. This is how families work! This is what she was always missing! A mother to oversee her mothering. Yes, of course! How lucky to have Maya. Which was why, in their initial conversation, when Maya told them to stop listening to Ames, Reese laughed and agreed. “He has too many ideas!” Maya said. “It’s all so abstract! Even this book! So abstract! When it’s three in the morning and the baby is crying or sick, and you are bone-tired, who cares what your family structure looks like? All three of you are going to be too tired to care whose name says what on what legal piece of paper.” “Tm already getting too tired to care,” interjected Katrina with her hand on her stomach. For once rather than jealousy, Reese felt compassion. She’d seen Katrina in the mornings now, fatigued by that first trimester. “You know what you two should do?” Maya advised. “Go make a baby registry. When you're in the store together, looking at cribs and clothes, you'll get a much clearer idea of each other’s mothering styles. You'll see where you’re compatible and where yow’re going to fight. Because you will certainly fight. I promise. Stop philosophizing about the meaning of family. Get a jump-start on the real work of making one.” “That’s a good idea,” Katrina said, and Reese nodded.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  I shrug, trapped. I don’t want to lose him. In spite of all his demands, his need to control, his scary vices, I have never felt as alive as I do now. It’s a thrill to be sitting here beside him. He’s so unpredictable, sexy, smart, and funny. But his moods… Oh—and he wants to punish me. He says he’ll think about my reservations, but it still scares me. I close my eyes. What can I say? Deep down I would just like more—more affection, more playful Christian, more…love. He squeezes my hand. “Talk to me, Anastasia. I don’t want to lose you. This last week—” We’re coming to the end of the bridge, and the road is once more bathed in the neon glimmer of the streetlights so his face is intermittently in the light and the dark. And it’s such a fitting metaphor. This man, whom I once thought of as a romantic hero, a brave shining white knight—or the dark knight, as he said. He’s not a hero; he’s a man with serious, deep emotional flaws, and he’s dragging me into the dark. Can I not guide him into the light? “I still want more,” I whisper. “I know,” he says. “I’ll try.” I blink up at him, and he relinquishes my hand and pulls at my chin, releasing my trapped lip. “For you, Anastasia, I will try.” He’s radiating sincerity. And that’s my cue. I unbuckle my seat belt, reach across, and clamber into his lap, taking him completely by surprise. Wrapping my arms around his head, I kiss him, long and hard, and in a nanosecond, he’s responding. “Stay with me tonight. If you go away, I won’t see you all week. Please,” he asks. “Yes,” I acquiesce. “And I’ll try, too. I’ll sign your contract.” And it’s a spur-of-the-moment decision. He gazes at me. “Sign after Georgia. Think about it. Think about it hard, baby.” “I will.” And we sit in silence for a mile or two. “You really should wear your seat belt,” Christian whispers disapprovingly into my hair, but he makes no move to shift me from his lap. I nuzzle up against him, eyes closed, my nose at his throat, drinking in his sexy Christian-and-spiced-musky-bodywash fragrance, my head on his shoulder. I let my mind drift, and I allow myself to fantasize that he loves me. Oh, and it’s so real, tangible almost, and a small part of my nasty harpy subconscious acts completely out of character and dares to hope. I’m careful not to touch his chest but just snuggle in his arms as he holds me tightly. All too soon, I’m torn from my impossible daydream. “We’re home,” Christian murmurs, and it’s such a tantalizing sentence, full of so much potential. Home, with Christian. Except his apartment is an art gallery, not a home.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  The screen saver on Amy’s computer was of crystallizing fractals. When on the phone, she had developed the mindless habit of following the formations as they appeared, bouncing her eyes off the slight irregularities in the pattern. “Yeah, okay, I understand. But listen. There’s an orientation tonight. Omar is going to tell his sister that we’re coming. A new director at the agency has been pushing for trans and genderqueer foster homes, because so many of the kids in the system are queer. If we move soon, Omar’s sister could introduce 9 us. “When’s the orientation?” “At seven at a Unitarian church. That’s what I wanted to tell you. I'll take the rest of the day off. We can get ready for it together.” “T can’t. I have work.” “What? Take off work! We’ve been talking about a chance like this for years!” “My work is just as important as yours, Amy.” Amy sighed. She had accidentally poked right at that sore spot, hadn’t she? “I never said it wasn’t. I’m suggesting that I take off work too.” “Well, how about we meet at home at like four?” What was going on? She had figured Reese would be rushing home already. Not this grudging response. Reese knew the situation as well as Amy did: Most of the private adoption agencies, the ones that procured babies from faraway countries, charged an adoption fee in excess of twenty thousand and up to forty thousand dollars. That was just the beginning of the costs. Amy calculated that if she and Reese went to the fanciest agencies and paid the fees, such a show of money might work like in expensive boutiques. As if their transness were merely an eccentric outcropping of a refined taste. But Amy hadn’t saved forty thousand dollars, and might not any time soon, especially not supporting Reese. She’d drain her bank account putting together half that, leaving nothing to raise the baby, much less the miscellaneous expenses and travel that two of her older coworkers had explained to her came with their own efforts to adopt. This left adoption through the foster care system. And while foster care certainly allowed for LGBTQ parents by law, in practice, the heavy oversight and rights of the natal parents in the foster system meant that fewer queers than straights made it to the adoption phase. And until today, Amy had never heard of a double-trans couple getting anywhere at all. But okay, whatever. Of course she could meet Reese at four.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  Let me know if you’re okay. Christian Grey CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. Jeez, why is he so worried about my Beetle? It has given me three years of loyal service, and José has always been on hand to maintain it for me. Christian’s next email is from today. From: Christian Grey Subject: Soft Limits Date: May 26 2011 17:22 To: Anastasia Steele What can I say that I haven’t already? Happy to talk these through anytime. You looked beautiful today. Christian Grey CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. I want to see him. I hit reply. From: Anastasia Steele Subject: Soft Limits Date: May 26 2011 19:23 To: Christian Grey I can come over this evening to discuss if you’d like. Ana From: Christian Grey Subject: Soft Limits Date: May 26 2011 19:27 To: Anastasia Steele I’ll come to you. I meant it when I said I wasn’t happy about you driving that car. I’ll be with you shortly. Christian Grey CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. Holy crap…he’s coming over now. I have to get one thing ready for him—the first edition Thomas Hardy books are still on the shelves in the living room. I cannot keep them. I wrap them in brown paper, and I scrawl on the wrapping a direct quote from Tess from the book: “I agree to the conditions, Angel; because you know best what my punishment ought to be; only—only—don’t make it more than I can bear!” Chapter Fifteen“Hi.” I feel unbearably shy when I open the door. Christian is standing on the porch in his jeans and leather jacket. “Hi,” he says, and his face lights up with his radiant smile. I take a moment to admire the pretty. Oh my, he’s hot in leather. “Come in.” “If I may,” he says, amused. He holds up a bottle of champagne as he walks in. “I thought we’d celebrate your graduation. Nothing beats a good Bollinger.” “Interesting choice of words,” I comment dryly. He grins. “Oh, I like your ready wit, Anastasia.” “We only have teacups. We’ve packed all the glasses.” “Teacups? Sounds good to me.” I head into the kitchen. Nervous, butterflies flooding my stomach, it’s like having a panther or mountain lion all unpredictable and predatory in my living room. “Do you want saucers as well?” “Teacups will be fine, Anastasia,” Christian calls distractedly from the living room. When I return, he’s staring at the brown parcel of books. I place the cups on the table. “That’s for you,” I murmur anxiously. Crap…this is probably going to be a fight. “Hmm, I figured as much. Very apt quote.” His long index finger absently traces the writing. “I thought I was d’Urberville, not Angel. You decided on the debasement.” He gives me a brief wolfish smile. “Trust you to find something that resonates so appropriately.” “It’s also a plea,” I whisper. Why am I so nervous? My mouth is dry. “A plea? For me to go easy on you?” I nod.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  The book is divided into five parts. Part 1 presents the basic elements of a two- systems approach to judgment and choice. It elaborates the distinction between the automatic operations of System 1 and the controlled operations of System 2, and shows how associative memory, the core of System 1, continually constructs a coherent interpretation of what is going on in our world at any instant. I attempt to give a sense of the complexity and richness of the automatic and often unconscious processes that underlie intuitive thinking, and of how these automatic processes explain the heuristics of judgment. A goal is to introduce a language for thinking and talking about the mind. Part 2 updates the study of judgment heuristics and explores a major puzzle: Why is it so difficult for us to think statistically? We easily think associatively, we think metaphorically, we think causally, but statistics requires thinking about many things at once, which is something that System 1 is not designed to do. The difficulties of statistical thinking contribute to the main theme of Part 3, which describes a puzzling limitation of our mind: our excessive confidence in what we believe we know, and our apparent inability to acknowledge the full extent of our ignorance and the uncertainty of the world we live in. We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events. Overconfidence is fed by the illusory certainty of hindsight. My views on this topic have been influenced by Nassim Taleb, the author of The Black Swan. I hope for watercooler conversations that intelligently explore the lessons that can be learned from the past while resisting the lure of hindsight and the illusion of certainty. The focus of part 4 is a conversation with the discipline of economics on the nature of decision making and on the assumption that economic agents are rational. This section of the book provides a current view, informed by the two- system model, of the key concepts of prospect theory, the model of choice that Amos and I published in 1979. Subsequent chapters address several ways human choices deviate from the rules of rationality. I deal with the unfortunate tendency to treat problems in isolation, and with framing effects, where decisions are shaped by inconsequential features of choice problems. These observations, which are readily explained by the features of System 1, present a deep challenge to the rationality assumption favored in standard economics. Part 5 describes recent research that has introduced a distinction between two selves, the experiencing self and the remembering self, which do not have the same interests. For example, we can expose people to two painful experiences. One of these experiences is strictly worse than the other, because it is longer. But the automatic formation of memories—a feature of System 1—has

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  Th e tale of Taïsia’s repentance is handed down among the chain of tradi- tions about the earliest generations of monks, principally from the site of Scetis. Th e Sayings of the Desert Fathers preserve a number of memories about the colorful ascetic John the Dwarf, who fl ourished in the last de- cades of the fourth century and the fi rst de cade of the fi fth. Most of the sto- ries and sayings focus on monastic pioneers from the mid- fourth to the early fi fth century. In the earliest days these memories were transmitted orally, and characteristic traces of oral transmission remain in the collections. Th e story of Taïsia passed through only a few generations of oral transmission before  FROM SHAME TO SIN its redaction in the Sayings, which seems to have taken shape as a text in the second half of the fi fth century, probably in Palestine. A Palestinian origin for the redaction would add poignancy to the humbling fi nale of Taïsia’s story. Th e heavenly voice that affi rms her salvation reminds us of nothing so much as an aphorism of Rabbi Judah ha Nasi that recurs throughout Avo- dah Zarah, uttered after the repentance of the most condign sinners. “One may acquire eternal life after many years, another in one hour!”  In the desert, “the air is more pure, the heavens are more open, and God is nearer.” Th e fi gure of the penitent prostitute fi rst took shape in the sands of Egypt, in the earliest monastic traditions, because she so radically con- densed the cosmic possibilities of repentance, metanoia. In the pioneer phases of Egyptian monasticism, fallen women begin to populate the land- scape as avatars of temptation and repentance. Taïsia belongs to this most primitive stratum. Th e trials and ecstasies she experienced were not hers alone. In another early legend an anonymous monk discovers that his sister has fallen into prostitution. He leads her to repentance, and as they walk into the desert, she expires. In the tale that was destined to have the most extravagant afterlife, a monk named Serapion passes through a “village of Egypt” and sees “a prostitute standing in her cell.” When dusk falls, he goes in with her. He chanted the psalms and prayed to God that she would “re- pent and be saved.” Th e prostitute realizes that he has come to save her soul. She cries and asks Serapion to lead her away. When they arrive at a monas- tery of virgins, he gives the abbess instructions to be gentle with her. After a few days, the former prostitute told the abbess, “I am a sinner.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  Her parents attended one of my communication workshops for family members and asked me to help. They told me they wished they had had the workshop’s guidance before their trip to the Philippines, or even that they had taken me along. I told them to keep learning all they could about the group: its buzzwords, lifestyle and beliefs. To this end I put them in touch with several former members. I also encouraged them to continue practicing the communication techniques I taught them. Within a year, Margaret contacted them from Mexico and asked if they could come to visit again. I sat down with the Rogers family and discussed the options. How could they get me to her, keep the husband away as long as possible, and evoke a minimum of suspicion—all at the same time? We concluded that the parents should not make the trip at all. They represented the clearest threat to Margaret’s cult involvement. Instead, only her two sisters and brother would go, for a week. I would go, too, posing as her sister Lisa’s boyfriend. We manufactured a story that Margaret’s father was under doctor’s orders not to take such a trip—he had a problem with his heart. His wife was unable to get time off from work and felt obliged to stay close to home to help her husband, if necessary. Margaret’s brother Bob called up his company’s branch office in Mexico City and talked them into giving a job interview to Margaret’s husband, who, the family knew, was looking for a way to earn some legitimate, steady money. Bob convinced the husband to accept the offer of a job interview. Bob would accompany him to Mexico City for a few days to give us time alone with Margaret. The plan was to assess Margaret’s state of mind and try to convince her to come back to the United States, with her children. We hoped that after the previous visit, she might be homesick. Also, if she didn’t really love her husband, as we all suspected, we had a good chance of success. Everything started out smoothly. When we arrived, Margaret and her husband showed little or no sign of anxiety. We all spent the first day together. None of us indicated that we were bothered by Margaret’s lifestyle. We went out to eat lots of good food, went shopping, bought the whole family new clothes, and generally had a good time. Margaret and her husband did not try to sell the group to us in any way. Bob left with Margaret’s husband the next day, and we invited Margaret to our hotel, where we took a room for her and the kids. We volunteered to take the kids out, and recommended that she lie down and catch up on some sleep in the meantime.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  Much can be done to stop the spread of cults and undue influence. Here is a brief checklist of practical steps that people can take: Everyone Learn more about cults, mind control and undue influence. Many wonderful documentaries have just been done—including HBO’s Going Clear (on Scientology), Truth Be Told 222 (on Jehovah’s Witnesses), and Prophets Prey (on Warren Jeffs’ Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints [FLDS] cult). Watch them! Visit websites such as icsahome.com (International Cultic Studies Association) and Families Against Cult Teachings (familiesagainstcultteachings.org). Please visit my website, freedomofmind.com. Read widely. You may appreciate my other books Releasing the Bonds and especially the more recent Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults and Beliefs. Stay up-to-date with our social media. Follow us on Twitter(@CultExpert) and Facebook (facebook.com/FOMinc). Read the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and share it widely.223 Share these resources with others. Discuss one of them in your book or movie group. Tweet about them. Put up relevant articles on your blog. Write reviews on Amazon.com and Goodreads.com Protect yourself—research any potential organization carefully before agreeing to attend its events. When in doubt about an organization, ask the questions provided in Chapter 7. Don’t give out personal information of any kind to anyone until they have demonstrated that they are trustworthy. Do not put personal information up on the Internet. If someone enters your life with “psychic” powers, you should assume they found your personal information online. Lobby your politicians—local, state and federal. Set up appointments to tell them your concerns. Ask them to stand up for human rights. If you suspect that someone you know is under the sway of a group or individual and may be a victim of undue influence, don’t turn a blind eye. Act quickly. Express your concerns to the person’s friends and family. If you know a former cult member whose involvement kept them from gaining a formal education or employment, please go out of your way to help find them a job or re-enter the educational system. Do whatever you can to help them integrate into society. If you are a former member, help de-stigmatize the whole area of cult involvement. Tell people your story. Help them understand that those of us who were in a cult do not have something “wrong” with us. Help the public see that we were unduly influenced. If you are in a position to help the efforts to assist current members to reevaluate their life and exit to freedom, please do! If it is prudent not to do so publicly, there is much you can do behind the scenes to help people who are actively setting up websites, social media campaigns, contacting authorities, hiring attorneys and private investigators to find out vital background information. Government: Federal and State Ask the Surgeon General—or some other high-ranking and credible government official—to state definitively that undue influence exists and that destructive cult mind control is bad for public health.

• From The Lover (1984)

  I’m at a state boarding school in Saigon. I eat and sleep there, but I go to classes at the French high school. My mother is a teacher and wants her girl to have a secondary education. “You have to go to high school.” What was enough for her is not enough for her daughter. High school and then a good degree in mathematics. That was what had been dinned into me ever since I started school. It never crossed my mind I might escape the mathematics degree, I was glad to give her that hope. Every day I saw her planning her own and her children’s future. There came a time when she couldn’t plan anything very grand for her sons any more, so she planned other futures, makeshift ones, but they too served their purpose, they blocked in the time that lay ahead. I remember my younger brother’s courses in bookkeeping. From the Universal Correspondence School—every year, every level. You have to catch up, my mother used to say. It would last for three days, never four. Never. We’d drop the Universal School whenever my mother was posted to another place. And begin again in the next. My mother kept it up for ten years. It wasn’t any good. My younger brother became an accountant’s clerk in Saigon. There was no technical school in the colonies; we owed my elder brother’s departure for France to that. He stayed in France for several years to study at the technical school. But he didn’t keep it up. My mother must have known. But she had no choice, he had to be got away from the other two children. For several years he was no longer part of the family. It was while he was away that my mother bought the land. A terrible business, but for us, the children who were left, not so terrible as the presence of the killer would have been, the child-killer of the night, of the night of the hunter.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  “Ana! He likes you. No doubt about it.” Her tone is emphatic. “Kate, he’s just trying to be nice.” But even as I say the words, I know they’re not true—Christian Grey doesn’t do nice. He does polite, maybe. And a small, quiet voice whispers, Perhaps Kate is right. My scalp prickles at the idea that maybe, just maybe, he might like me. After all, he did say he was glad Kate didn’t do the interview. I hug myself with quiet glee, rocking from side to side, entertaining the possibility that he might like me. Kate brings me back to the now. “I don’t know who we’ll get to do the shoot. Levi, our regular photographer, can’t. He’s home in Idaho Falls for the weekend. He’ll be pissed that he blew an opportunity to photograph one of America’s leading entrepreneurs.” “Hmm… What about José?” “Great idea! You ask him—he’ll do anything for you. Then call Grey and find out where he wants us.” Kate is irritatingly cavalier about José. “I think you should call him.” “Who, José?” Kate scoffs. “No, Grey.” “Ana, you’re the one with the relationship.” “Relationship?” I squeak, my voice rising several octaves. “I barely know the guy.” “At least you’ve met him,” she says bitterly. “And it looks like he wants to know you better. Ana, just call him,” she snaps and hangs up. She is so bossy sometimes. I frown at my cell, sticking my tongue out at it. I’m just leaving a message for José when Paul enters the stockroom looking for sandpaper. “We’re kind of busy out there, Ana,” he says without acrimony. “Yeah, um, sorry,” I mutter, turning to leave. “So, how come you know Christian Grey?” Paul’s voice is unconvincingly nonchalant. “I had to interview him for our student newspaper. Kate wasn’t well.” I shrug, trying to sound casual and doing no better than him. “Christian Grey in Clayton’s. Go figure,” Paul snorts, amazed. He shakes his head as if to clear it. “Anyway, want to grab a drink or something this evening?” Whenever he’s home he asks me on a date, and I always say no. It’s a ritual. I’ve never considered it a good idea to date the boss’s brother, and besides, Paul is cute in a wholesome all-American boy-next-door kind of way, but he’s no literary hero, not by any stretch of the imagination. Is Grey? my subconscious asks me, her eyebrow figuratively raised. I slap her down. “Don’t you have a family dinner or something for your brother?” “That’s tomorrow.” “Maybe some other time, Paul. I need to study tonight. I have finals next week.” “Ana, one of these days you’ll say yes.” He smiles as I escape to the store floor. “But I do places, Ana, not people,” José groans. “José, please?” I beg. I pace the living room of our apartment, clutching my cell and staring out the window at the fading evening light.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  The British Library? I touch the icon and a menu appears: HISTORICAL COLLECTION. Scrolling down, I select NOVELS OF THE 18TH AND 19TH CENTURY. Another menu. I tap on a title: The American BY HENRY JAMES. A new window opens, offering me a scanned copy of the book to read. Holy crap—it’s an early edition, published in 1879, and it’s on my iPad! He’s bought me the British Library at a touch of a button. I exit quickly, knowing that I could be lost in this app for an eternity. I notice a “good food” app that makes me roll my eyes and smile at the same time, a news app, a weather app, but his note mentioned music. I go back to the main screen, hit the iPod icon, and a playlist appears. I scroll through the songs, and the list makes me smile. Thomas Tallis—I’m not going to forget that in a hurry. I heard it twice, after all, while he flogged and fucked me. “Witchcraft.” My grin gets wider—dancing around the great room. The Bach Marcello piece—oh no, that’s way too sad for my mood right now. Hmm. Jeff Buckley—yeah, I’ve heard of him. Snow Patrol—my favorite band—and a song called “Principles of Lust” by Enigma. How Christian. Another called “Possession”… oh yes, very Fifty Shades. And a few more I have never heard. Selecting a song that catches my eye, I press play. It’s called “Try” by Nelly Furtado. She starts to sing, and her voice is a silken scarf wrapping around me, enveloping me. I lie down on my bed. Does this mean Christian’s going to try? Try this new relationship? I drink in the lyrics, staring at the ceiling, trying to understand his turnaround. He missed me. I missed him. He must have some feelings for me. He must. This iPad, these songs, these apps—he cares. He really cares. My heart swells with hope. The song ends and tears spring to my eyes. I quickly scroll to another—“The Scientist” by Coldplay—one of Kate’s favorite bands. I know the track, but I’ve never really listened to the lyrics before. I close my eyes and let the words wash over and through me. My tears start to flow. I can’t stem them. If this isn’t an apology, what is it? Oh, Christian. Or is this an invitation? Will he answer my questions? Am I reading too much into this? I am probably reading too much into this. I dash my tears away. I have to email him to thank him. I leap off my bed to fetch the mean machine. Coldplay continues as I sit cross-legged on my bed. The Mac powers up and I log in. From: Anastasia Steele Subject: IPAD Date: June 9 2011 23:56 To: Christian Grey You’ve made me cry again. I love the iPad. I love the songs. I love the British Library App. I love you. Thank you. Good night. Ana xx From: Christian Grey Subject: iPad

• From The Lover (1984)

  I’ll do it again. My mother will be informed. She’ll come and see the head of the boarding school and ask her to let me do as I like in the evenings, not to check the time I come in, not to force me to go out with the other girls on Sunday excursions. She says, She’s a child who’s always been free, otherwise she’d run away, even I, her own mother, can’t do anything about it, if I want to keep her I have to let her be free. The head agrees because I’m white and the place needs a few whites among all the half-castes for the sake of its reputation. My mother also said I was working hard in high school even though I had my freedom, and that what had happened with her sons was so awful, such a disaster, that her daughter’s education was the only hope left to her. The head let me live in the boarding school as if it were a hotel. Soon I’ll have a diamond on my engagement finger. Then the teachers will stop making remarks. People will guess I’m not engaged, but the diamond’s very valuable, no one will doubt that it’s genuine, and no one will say anything any more, because of the value of the diamond that’s been given to this very young girl.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  Introduction Every author, I suppose, has in mind a setting in which readers of his or her work could benefit from having read it. Mine is the proverbial office watercooler, where opinions are shared and gossip is exchanged. I hope to enrich the vocabulary that people use when they talk about the judgments and choices of others, the company’s new policies, or a colleague’s investment decisions. Why be concerned with gossip? Because it is much easier, as well as far more enjoyable, to identify and label the mistakes of others than to recognize our own. Questioning what we believe and want is difficult at the best of times, and especially difficult when we most need to do it, but we can benefit from the informed opinions of others. Many of us spontaneously anticipate how friends and colleagues will evaluate our choices; the quality and content of these anticipated judgments therefore matters. The expectation of intelligent gossip is a powerful motive for serious self-criticism, more powerful than New Year resolutions to improve one’s decision making at work and at home. To be a good diagnostician, a physician needs to acquire a large set of labels for diseases, each of which binds an idea of the illness and its symptoms, possible antecedents and causes, possible developments and consequences, and possible interventions to cure or mitigate the illness. Learning medicine consists in part of learning the language of medicine. A deeper understanding of judgments and choices also requires a richer vocabulary than is available in everyday language. The hope for informed gossip is that there are distinctive patterns in the errors people make. Systematic errors are known as biases, and they recur predictably in particular circumstances. When the handsome and confident speaker bounds onto the stage, for example, you can anticipate that the audience will judge his comments more favorably than he deserves. The availability of a diagnostic label for this bias—the halo effect—makes it easier to anticipate, recognize, and understand. When you are asked what you are thinking about, you can normally answer. You believe you know what goes on in your mind, which often consists of one conscious thought leading in an orderly way to another. But that is not the only way the mind works, nor indeed is that the typical way. Most impressions and thoughts arise in your conscious experience without your knowing how they got