Joy

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 Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  I stroked it gently, on which the mutinous rogue seemed to swell, and gather a new degree of fierceness and insolence; so that finding it grew not to be trifled with any longer, I prepared for rubbers in good earnest. Slipping then a pillow under me, that I might give him the fairest play, I guided officiously with my hand this furious battering ram, whose ruby head, presenting nearest the resemblance of a heart, I applied to its proper mark, which lay as finely elevated as we could wish; my hips being borne up, and my thighs at their utmost extension, the gleamy warmth that shot from it, made him feel that he was at the mouth of the indraught, and driving fore right, the powerfully divided lips of that pleasure-thirsty channel received him. He hesitated a little; then, settled well in the passage, he makes his way up the straights of it, with a difficulty nothing more than pleasing, widening as he went so as to distend and smooth each soft furrow: our pleasure increasing deliciously, in proportion to our points of mutual touch increased in that so vital part of me which I had now taken him, all indriven, and completely sheathed; and which, crammed as it was, stretched splitting ripe, gave it so gratefully straight an accommodation! so strict a fold! a suction so fierce! that gave and took unutterable delight. We had now reached the closest point of union; but when he beckened to come on the fiercer, as if I had ben actuated by a fear of losing him, in the height of my fury, I twist my legs round his naked loins, the flesh of which, so firm, so springy to the touch, quivered again under the pressure; and now I had him every way encircled and begirt; and having drawn him home to me, I kept him fast there, as if I had sought to unite bodies with him at that point.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "Then turning to me,—'I'll introduce you to a lot of pleasant fellows who'll be delighted to make your acquaintance, and many of whom have long been astonished that you are not one of us.' "The week passed quickly. Joy soon made me forget the dreadful anxiety caused by Briancourt's card. "A few days before the night fixed for the feast,—'How shall we dress for the symposium?' asked Teleny? "'How? Is it to be a masquerade?' "'We all have our little hobbies. Some men like soldiers, others sailors; some are fond of tightrope dancers, others of dandies. There are men who, though in love with their own sex, only care for them in women's clothes. L'habit ne fait pas le moine is not always a truthful proverb, for you see that even in birds the males display their gayest plumage to captivate their mates.' "'And what clothes should you like me to wear, for you are the only being I care to please?' said I. "'None.' "'Oh! but——' "'You'll feel shy, to be seen naked?' "'Of course.' "'Well, then, a tight-fitting cycling suit; it shews off the figure best.' "'Very well; and you?' "'I'll always dress exactly as you do.' "On the evening in question we drove to the painter's studio, the outside of which was, if not quite dark, at least very dimly lighted. Teleny tapped three times, and after a little while Briancourt himself came to open. "Whatever faults the general's son had, his manners were those of the French nobility, therefore perfect; his stately gait might even have graced the court of the grand Monarque; his politeness was unrivalled—in fact, he possessed all those 'small, sweet courtesies of life,' which, as Sterne says, 'beget inclinations to love at first sight.' He was about to usher us in, when Teleny stopped him. "'Wait a moment,' said he, 'could not Camille have a peep at your harem first? You know he is but a neophyte in the Priapean creed. I am his first lover.' "'Yes, I know,' interrupted Briancourt, sighing, 'and I cannot say sincerely, may you long be the last.' "'And not being inured to the sight of such revelry he will be induced to run away like Joseph from Mrs. Potiphar.' "'Very well, do you mind giving yourself the trouble to come this way?' "And with these words he led us through a dimly-lighted passage, and up a winding staircase into a kind of balcony made out of old Arab mouchambiè, brought to him by his father from Tunis or Algiers. "'From here you can see everything without being seen, so ta-ta for a while, but not for long, as supper will soon be served.' "As I stepped in this kind of loggia and looked down into the room, I was, for a moment, if not dazzled, at least perfectly bewildered. It seemed as if from this every-day world of ours I had been transported into the magic realms of fairy-land.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  Extremes, however, are always absurd, and I found myself amazed at the ridiculous level to which uncritical thought can sink. At one point in our training we were expected to learn how to administer various psychological tests, including intelligence tests such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, or WAIS, and personality tests such as the Rorschach. My first practice subject was my husband, who, as an artist, not surprisingly scored off the top on the visual performance parts of the WAIS, frequently having to explain to me how to put the block designs together. His Rorschach responses were of a level of originality that I have not seen since. On the Draw-A-Person test I noticed that he seemed to be taking it very seriously, drawing meticulously and slowly what I assumed would be some kind of revealing self-portrait. When he finally showed the picture to me, however, it was a wonderfully elaborated orangutan whose long arms extended along the borders of the page. I thought it was marvelous and took the results of his WAIS, Rorschach, and Draw-A-Person to my psychological-testing supervisor. She was an entirely humorless and doctrinaire psychoanalyst who spent more than an hour interpreting, in the most fatuous and speculative manner, the primitive and repressed rage of my husband, his intrapsychic conflicts, his ambivalences, his antisocial nature, and his deeply disturbed personality structure. My now former husband, whom I have never, in almost twenty-five years, known to lie, was being labeled a sociopath; a man who was quite singularly straightforward and gentle was interpreted as deeply disturbed, conflicted, and filled with rage. All because he had done something different on a test. It was absurd. Indeed, it was so ridiculous to me that, after having giggled uncontrollably for quite a long while, thus provoking even further wrath—and, worse yet, further interpretations—I half stormed, half laughed my way out of her office and refused to write up the test report. This, too, needless to say, was obsessed over, dissected, and analyzed. Most of my real education came from the wide variety and large number of patients that I evaluated and treated during my predoctoral clinical internships. Along the way, I completed the course work for my two minor fields, psychopharmacology and animal behavior. I particularly loved studying animal behavior and supplemented the courses offered by the psychology department with graduate courses given by the zoology department. These zoology courses focused on the biology of aquatic mammals and covered not only the biology and natural history of sea otters, seals, sea lions, whales, and dolphins, but also such esoterica as the cardiovascular adaptations made to diving by sea lions and whales and the communication systems used by dolphins. It was learning for learning’s sake, and I loved it. None of this had any relevance whatsoever to anything else I was studying or doing, nor to anything I have done since, but they were far and away the most interesting classes I took in graduate school.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  Inevitably, the year passed: the snows and warming brandies of the English winter gave way to the soft rains and white wines of early summer. Roses and horses appeared in Hyde Park; gorgeous, diaphanous apple blossoms spread out over the black branches of the trees in St. James’s Park; and the long, still hours of summer light cast an Edwardian hue over the days just up to my parting. It had become difficult to remember my life in Los Angeles, much less to think about returning to the chaotic days of running a large university clinic filled with very sick patients, teaching, and seeing a full caseload of patients again. I was beginning to have doubts that I could remember the details of conducting a psychiatric history and examination, much less teaching others how to do it. I was reluctant to leave England, and even more reluctant to return to a city I had come to associate not only with a grueling academic career, but also with breakdowns, the worn, cold, bloodlessness following in their wake, and the draining charade of pretending to be well when I wasn’t and going through the motions of being pleasant when I felt dreadful. I was, however, very wrong in my forebodings. The year had served as far more than just a restful interlude; it had been, in fact, truly restorative. Teaching was once again fun; supervising the clinical work of the residents and interns was, as it had been in earlier times, a pleasure; and seeing patients gave me the opportunity to try to put into practice some of what I had learned from my own experiences. Mental exhaustion had taken a long, terrible toll, but, strangely, it was only in feeling well, energetic, and high-spirited again that I had any true sense of the toll taken.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  This bred a pause of action, a pleasure stop, whilst that delicate glutton, my nether mouth, as full as it could hold, kept palating, with exquisite relish, the morsel that so deliciously ingorged it. But nature could not long endure a pleasure that it so highly provoked without satisfying it: pursuing then its darling end, the battery recommenced with redoubled exertion; nor lay I inactive on my side, but encountering him with all the impetuosity of motion I was mistress of, the downy cloth of our meeting mount was now of real use to break the violence of the tilt; and soon, indeed! the highwrought agitation, the sweet urgency of this to-and-fro friction, raised the titillation on me to its height; so that finding myself on the point of going, and loath to leave the tender partner of my joys behind me, I employed all the forwarding motions and arts my experience suggested to me, to promote his keeping me company to our journey’s end. I not only then tightened the pleasure-girth round my restless inmate, by a secret spring of friction and compression that obeys the will in those parts, but stole my hand softly to that store bag of nature’s prime sweets, which is so pleasingly attached to its conduit pipe, from which we receive them; there feeling, and most gently indeed, squeezing those tender globular reservoirs, the magic touch took instant effect, quickened, and brought on upon the spur the symptoms of that sweet agony, the melting moment of dissolution, when pleasure dies by pleasure, and the mysterious engine of it overcomes the titillation it has raised in those parts, by plying them with the stream of a warm liquid, that in itself the highest of all titillations, and which they thirstily express and draw in like the hot natured leach, which, to cool itself, tenaciously extracts all the moisture within its sphere of execution. Chiming then to me, with exquisite consent, as I melted away, his oily balsamic injection, mixing deliciously with the sluices in flow from me, sheathed and blunted all the stings of pleasure, whilst a voluptuous languor possest, and still maintained us motionless, and fast locked in one another’s arms.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  What was this new thing that I thus learned? That I did not realize, but the consciousness of this indefinite state filled me with joy. In that state there was no room for jealousy. The same faces, and among them he and my wife, I saw in a different light. This music transported me into an unknown world, where there was no room for jealousy. Jealousy and the feelings that provoke it seemed to me trivialities, nor worth thinking of. “After the presto followed the andante, not very new, with commonplace variations, and the feeble finale. Then they played more, at the request of the guests,—first an elegy by Ernst, and then various other pieces. They were all very well, but did not produce upon me a tenth part of the impression that the opening piece did. I felt light and gay throughout the evening. As for my wife, never had I seen her as she was that night. Those brilliant eyes, that severity and majestic expression while she was playing, and then that utter languor, that weak, pitiable, and happy smile after she had finished,—I saw them all and attached no importance to them, believing that she felt as I did, that to her, as to me, new sentiments had been revealed, as through a fog. During almost the whole evening I was not jealous. “Two days later I was to start for the assembly of the Zemstvo, and for that reason, on taking leave of me and carrying all his scores with him, Troukhatchevsky asked me when I should return. I inferred from that that he believed it impossible to come to my house during my absence, and that was agreeable to me. Now I was not to return before his departure from the city. So we bade each other a definite farewell. For the first time I shook his hand with pleasure, and thanked him for the satisfaction that he had given me. He likewise took leave of my wife, and their parting seemed to me very natural and proper. All went marvellously. My wife and I retired, well satisfied with the evening. We talked of our impressions in a general way, and we were nearer together and more friendly than we had been for a long time.” CHAPTER XXIV. “Two days later I started for the assembly, having bid farewell to my wife in an excellent and tranquil state of mind. In the district there was always much to be done. It was a world and a life apart. During two days I spent ten hours at the sessions.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Nor can I remember, without laughing, the innocent admiration, not without a spice of envy, with which we poor girls, whose church-going clothes did not rise above dowlas shifts and stuff gowns, beplaced with silver: all which we imagined grew in London, and entered for a great deal into my determination of trying to come in for my share of them. The idea however of having the company of a towns-woman with her, was the trivial, and all the motives that engaged Esther to take charge of me during my journey to town, where she told me, after the manner and style, “as how several maids out of the country had made themselves and all their kind for ever: that by preserving their virtue, some had taken so with their masters, that they had married them, and kept them coaches, and lived vastly grand and happy; and some, may-hap, came to be Duchesses; luck was all, and why not I, as well as another?”; with other almanacs to this purpose, which set me a tip-toe to begin this promising journey, and to leave a place which, though my native one, contained no relations that I had reason to regret, and was grown insupportable to me, from the change of the tenderest usage into a cold air of charity, with which I was entertained, even at the only friend’s house that I had the least expectation of care and protection from. She was, however, so just to me, as to manage the turning into money the little matters that remained to me after the debts and burial charges were allowed for, and, at my departure, put my whole fortune into my hands; which consisted of a very slender wardrobe, packed up in a very portable box, and eight guineas, with seventeen shillings in silver, stowed in a spring-pouch, which was a greater treasure than I ever had seen together, and which I could not conceive there was a possibility of running out; and indeed, I was so entirely taken up with the joy of seeing myself mistress of such an immence sum, that I gave very little attention to a world of good advice which was given me with it. Places, then, being taken for Esther and me in the Chester waggon, I pass over a very immaterial scene of leave-taking, at which I droped a few tears betwixt grief and joy; and, for the same reasons of insignificance, skip over all that happened to me on the road, such as the waggoner’s looking liquorish on me, the schemes laid for me by some of the passengers, which were defeated by the valiance of my guardian Esther; who, to do her justice, took a motherly care of me, at the same time that she taxed me for the protection by making me bear all travelling charges, which I defrayed with the unmost cheerfulness, and thought myself much obliged to her into the bargain.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  But still there was no end of his vigour: this double discharge had so far from extinguished his desires, for that time, that it had not even calmed them; and at his age, desires are power. He was proceeding then amazingly to push it to a third triumph, still without uncasing, if a tenderness, natural to true love, had not inspired me with self-denial enough to spare, and not over-strain him: and accordingly, entreating him to give himself and me quarter, I obtained, at length, a short suspension of arms, but not before he had exultingly satisfied me that he gave out standing. The remainder of the night, with what we borrowed upon the day, we employed with unwearied fervour in celebrating thus the festival of our remeeting; and got up pretty late in the morning, gay, brisk and alert, though rest had been a stranger to us: but the pleasures of love had been to us, what the joy of victory is to an army: repose, refreshment, every thing. The journey into the country being now entirely out of the question, and orders having been given overnight for turning the horses’ heads towards London, we left the inn as soon as we had breakfasted, not without a liberal distribution of the tokens of my grateful sense of the happiness I had met with in it. Charles and I were in my coach; the captain and my companion in a chaise hired purposely for them, to leave us the conveniency of a tête-à-tête . Here, on the road, as the tumult of my senses was tolerably composed, I had command enough of head to break properly to his the course of life that the consequences of my separation from him had driven me into: which, at the same time that he tenderly deplored with me, he was the less shocked at; as, on reflecting how he had left me circumstances, he could not be entirely unprepared for it. But when I opened the state of my fortune to him, and with that sincerity which, from me to him, was so much a nature in me, I beged of him his acceptance of it, on his own terms. I should appear to you perhaps too partial to my passion, were I to attempt the doing his delicacy justice, I shall content myself then with assuring you, that after his flatly refusing the unreserved, unconditional donation that I long persecuted him in vain to accept, it was at length, in obedience to his serious commands (for I stood out unaffectedly, till he exerted the sovereign authority which love had given him over me), that I yielded my consent to waive the remonstrance I did not fail of making strongly to him, against his degrading himself, and incurring the reflection, however unjust, of having, for respects of fortune, bartered his honour for infamy and prostitution, in making one his wife, who thought herself too much honoured in being but his mistress.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Thus we lay a few blissful instants, overpowered, still, and languid; till, as the sense of pleasure stagnated, we recovered from our trance, and he slipt out of me, not however before he had protested his extreme satisfaction by the tenderest kiss and embrace, as well as by the most cordial expressions. The company, who had stood round us in a profound silence, when all was over, helped me to hurry on my clothes in an instant, and complimented me on the sincere homage they could not escape observing had been done as they termed it—to the sovereignty of my charms, in my receiving a double payment of tribute at one juncture. But my partner, now dressed again, signalized, above all, a fondness unbated by the circumstance of recent enjoyment; the girls too kissed and embraced me, assuring me that for that time, or indeed any other, unless I pleased, I was to go through no farther public trials, and that I was now consummatedly initiated, and one of them. As it was an inviolable law for every gallant to keep to his partner, for the night especially, and even till he relinquished possession over to the community, in order to preserve a pleasing property, and to avoid the disgusts and indelicacy of another arrangement, the company, after a short refection of biscuits and wine, tea and chocolate, served in at now about one in the morning, broke up, and went off in pairs. Mrs. Cole had prepared my spark and me an occasion field-bed, to which we retired, and there ended the night in one continued strain of pleasure, sprightly and uncloyed enough for us not to have formed one wish for its ever knowing an end. In the morning, after a restorative breakfast in bed, he got up, and with very tender assurance of a particular regard for me, left me to the composure and refreshment of a sweet slumber; waking out of which, and getting up to dress before Mrs. Cole should come in, I found in one of my pockets a purse of guineas, which he had slipt there; and just as I was musing on a liberality I had certainly not expected, Mrs.

• From Between Us

  Uchida decided to study the phenomenon more systematically. She started by analyzing the very interviews that had inspired her, and counted how often and when Japanese and Americans mentioned emotions. These were broadcast interviews held right after the athletes had competed, and in that sense, very comparable moments for the Japanese and the American athletes. When interviewers asked the athletes directly how they felt, Japanese and American athletes did not differ in the number of the emotions they reported. But when the interviewer asked a question about other people (relatives, coaches, or friends), something Japanese interviewers did more than American interviewers, the Japanese but not the American athletes’ responses contained emotions. For example, to the question “What kind of support has your family given you?” a Japanese athlete responded, “My family always supported me, such as calling me a lot. I am really happy to meet the expectations of my family.” In contrast, an American athlete responded: “My family always supported me. My mother has always encouraged me.” Though athletes in both cultures were able to talk about their emotions, Japanese reported many more emotions in the context of relationships. Could it just be a difference of convention? Do Japanese simply learn to talk about emotions when asked about their relationships with others? In a separate study, Uchida and her colleagues showed Japanese and American college students pictures of winning athletes—either a Japanese or an American athlete. The athlete was pictured by themselves or with three teammates. And when did the students perceive that the athlete felt more emotion? Japanese students saw “more emotion” when the Japanese athlete was pictured with their teammates; for American students, it was the other way around. For Japanese, emotions were OURS; for Americans, they were MINE. Winning athletes arguably do not have a large range of emotions (they presumably won’t be sad!), but in another study, we found that Japanese students see OURS and Western students MINE emotions for a wider range of emotions. In the early 2000s, Phoebe Ellsworth, one of my mentors at the University at Michigan, asked me to list the cultural topics that I considered worthy of studying by emotion psychologists. I had become interested in the notion that Japanese conceive of their emotions as between people, rather than within. Ellsworth had a very creative graduate student, Taka Masuda, now himself a professor at the University of Alberta. Masuda was of Japanese origin, and my idea resonated with him. We started to collaborate. [image file=image_rsrc2M4.jpg] Figure 2.2 Japanese and American athletes (Copyright © 2008, American Psychological Association)

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  As I kept hesitating and disconcerted under this soft distraction, Charles, with a fond impatience, took the pains to undress me; and all I can remember amidst the nutter and discomposure of my senses, was, some flattering exclamation of joy and admiration, more specially at the feel of my breasts, now set at liberty from my stays, and which panting and rising in tumultous throbs, swelled upon his dear touch, and gave it the welcome pleasure of finding them well formed, and un-failed in firmness. I was soon laid in bed, and scarce languished an instant for the darling partner of it, before he was undressed and got between the sheets, with his arms clasped round me, giving and taking, with gust inexpressible, a kiss of welcome, that my heart rising to my lips stamped with its warmest impression, concurring to my bliss, with that delicate and voluptuous emotion which Charles alone had the secret to excite, and which constitutes the very life, the essence of pleasure. Mean while, two candles lighted on a side-table near us, and a joyous wood fire, threw a light into the bed, that took from one sense, of great importance to our joys, all pretext for complaining of its being shut out of its share of them; and, indeed, the sight of my idolized youth was alone, from the ardour with which I had wished for it, without other circumstance, a pleasure to die of. But as action was now a necessity to desires so much on edge as ours, Charles, after a very short prelusive dalliance, lifting up my linen and his own, laid the broad treasures of his manly chest close to my bosom, both beating with the tenderest alarms: when now, the sense of his glowing body, in naked touch with mine, took all power over my thoughts out of my own disposal, and delivered up every faculty of the soul to the sensiblest of joys, that affecting me infinitely more with my distinction of the person, than of the sex, now brought my heart deliriously into play: my heart, which, eternally constant to Charles, had never taken any part in my original sacrifices to the calls of constitution, complaisance, or interest.

• From Between Us

  When I tried to call alumni, I often found that they had already been contacted by this other person. . . . She was worried about me, and she might have thought I was unreliable. She is a very strong person. Perhaps I am not that strong; I tend to worry that my phone calls will come at an inconvenient time, so I find it really hard to decide when to call these alumni. . . . She must have thought that she’d rather make those phone calls herself than asking me to do it. Hiroto finds out that not only is he being criticized, but his critic had actually been doing his job. Hiroto is annoyed, he tells us, but he maintains harmony within the organizing committee; relational harmony is highly valued in Japanese cultural contexts. Perhaps Hiroto even suppresses his initial feelings of anger or annoyance; he does not say. But at any rate, he does what the situation requires from him: as a committee member he meets the social obligation of getting along and maintaining harmony. Hiroto does what the majority of our fifty Japanese interviewees told us they did in emotional episodes of anger: they tried to understand the perspective of the other person (i.e., their fellow committee member), and simply adjusted. According to their own reports, they did nothing else, even if they felt strongly. “Doing nothing” was far more frequent among Japanese respondents in “anger” situations than any type of aggression or assertiveness, or even than moving away. Although acceptance was not the term Hiroto used for this, what his response has in common with the Thai Buddhist family of Sen and with the Utku Inuit hosts of anthropologist Jean Briggs is that they did what needed to be done, and their feelings mostly followed. The emotion was outside in. Another example from our interviews illustrates the outside-in emotions well. Chiemi, a twenty-year-old Japanese student who lives with her grandparents, tells us she always tries to be home on time for dinner. Recently though, she has joined an extracurricular activity for which she stays out late a couple of days a week. When she mentions to her grandparents that she will be late that night, they complain that she is “never on time.” Chiemi is annoyed about this exaggeration, but she tries to understand her grandparents: They must be worrying; they surely mean well; they care about her. When the interviewer asks her what she does or tells her grandparents, Chiemi answers she never mentions to them that she is annoyed: How can I say . . . I want to say “I want to have more fun, I want to have fun until late at night.”

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Charles, whose whole frame was convulsed with the agitation of his rapture, whilst the tenderest fires trembled in his eyes, all assured me of a perfect concord of joy, penetrated me so profoundly, touched me so vitally, took me so much out of my own possession, whilst he seemed himself so much in mine, that in a delicious enthusiasm, I imagined such a transfusion of heart and spirit, as that coalescing, and making one body and soul with him, I was he, and he me. But all this pleasure tending, like life from its first instants, towards its own dissolution, lived too fast not to bring on upon the spur its delicious moment of mortality; for presently the approach of the tender agony discovered itself by its usual signals, that were quickly followed by my dear lover’s emanation of himself, that spun out, and shot, feelingly indeed! up the ravished indraught: where the sweetly soothing balmy titillation opened all the juices of joy on my side, which ecstatically in flow helped to allay the prurient glow, and drowned our pleasure for a while. Soon, however, to be on float again! for Charles, true to nature’s laws, in one breath, expiring and ejaculating, languished not long in the dissolving trance, but recovering spirit again, soon gave me to feel that the true mettle spring! of his instrument of pleasure, were, by love, and perhaps, by a long vacation, wound up too high to be let down by a single explosion: his stiffnesss till stood my friend. Resuming then the action afresh, without dislodging, or giving me the trouble of parting from my sweet tenant, we played over again the same opera, with the same harmony and concert: our ardours, like our love, knew no remission; and all the tide serving my lover, lavish of his stores, and pleasure-milked, he over-flowed me once more from the fulness of his oval reservoirs of the genial emulsion: whilst, on my side, a convulsive grasp, in the instant of my giving down the liquid contribution, rendered me sweetly subservient at once to the increase of joy, and to its effusions: moving me so, as to make me exert all those springs of the compressive exsuction, with which the sensitive mechanism of that part thirstily draws and drains the nipple of Love; with much such an instinctive eagerness and attachment, as to compare great with less, kind nature engages infants at the breasts, by the pleasure they find in the motion of their little mouths and cheeks, to extract the milky stream prepared for their nourishment.

• From The Hours (1998)

  She must have been spectacular twenty-five years ago; men must have died happy in her arms. Willie Bass is proud of his ability to discern the history of a face; to understand that those who are now old were once young. The light changes and he walks on. Clarissa crosses Eighth Street. She loves, helplessly, the dead television set abandoned on the curb alongside a single white patent-leather pump. She loves the vendor’s cart piled with broccoli and peaches and mangoes, each labeled with an index card that offers a price amid abundances of punctuation: “$1.49!!” “3 for ONE Dollar!?!” “50 Cents EA.!!!!!” Ahead, under the Arch, an old woman in a dark, neatly tailored dress appears to be singing, stationed precisely between the twin statues of George Washington, as warrior and politician, both faces destroyed by weather. It’s the city’s crush and heave that move you; its intricacy; its endless life. You know the story about Manhattan as a wilderness purchased for strings of beads but you find it impossible not to believe that it has always been a city; that if you dug beneath it you would find the ruins of another, older city, and then another and another. Under the cement and grass of the park (she has crossed into the park now, where the old woman throws back her head and sings) lay the bones of those buried in the potter’s field that was simply paved over, a hundred years ago, to make Washington Square. Clarissa walks over the bodies of the dead as men whisper offers of drugs (not to her) and three black girls whiz past on roller skates and the old woman sings, tunelessly, iiiiiii. Clarissa is skittish and jubilant about her luck, her good shoes (on sale at Barney’s, but still); here after all is the sturdy squalor of the park, visible even under its coat of grass and flowers; here are the drug dealers (would they kill you if it came to that?) and the lunatics, the stunned and baffled, the people whose luck, if they ever had any, has run out. Still, she loves the world for being rude and indestructible, and she knows other people must love it too, poor as well as rich, though no one speaks specifically of the reasons. Why else do we struggle to go on living, no matter how compromised, no matter how harmed? Even if we’re further gone than Richard; even if we’re fleshless, blazing with lesions, shitting in the sheets; still, we want desperately to live. It has to do with all this, she thinks.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  So she asked me if I wanted to read through the book of Matthew with her, and in fact I did. I wanted to see if this whole Jesus thing was real. I still had serious issues with Jesus, though, only because I associated Him with Christianity, and there was no way I would ever call myself a Christian. But I figured I should see for myself. So I told her yes.” “So then you started reading the Bible?” I asked. “Yes. We would eat chocolates and smoke cigarettes and read the Bible, which is the only way to do it, if you ask me. Don, the Bible is so good with chocolate. I always thought the Bible was more of a salad thing, you know, but it isn’t. It is a chocolate thing. We started reading through Matthew, and I thought it was all very interesting, you know. And I found Jesus very disturbing, very straightforward. He wasn’t diplomatic, and yet I felt like if I met Him, He would really like me. Don, I can’t explain how freeing that was, to realize that if I met Jesus, He would like me. I never felt like that about some of the Christians on the radio. I always thought if I met those people they would yell at me. But it wasn’t like that with Jesus. There were people He loved and people He got really mad at, and I kept identifying with the people He loved, which was really good, because they were all the broken people, you know, the kind of people who are tired of life and want to be done with it, or they are desperate people, people who are outcasts or pagans. There were others, regular people, but He didn’t play favorites at all, which is miraculous in itself. That fact alone may have been the most supernatural thing He did. He didn’t show partiality, which every human does.” “I never thought of it that way,” I told her. “He didn’t show partiality at all, Don, and neither should we. But listen, this is the best part. We got to the part of the book where Jesus started talking about soil.” “Soil?” “Yeah. There is a part in Matthew where Jesus talks about soil, and He is going to throw some seed on the soil and some of the seed is going to grow because the soil is good, and some of the seed isn’t because it fell on rock or the soil that wasn’t as good. And when I heard that, Don, everything in me leaped up, and I wanted so bad to be the good soil. That is all I wanted, to be the good soil! I was like, Jesus, please let me be the good soil!” “So that is when you became a Christian!” “No. That was later.” “So what happened next?” I asked.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  Lots of people started coming to church after that. I don’t know why, honestly, except that we all agreed we would love people and be nice to them and listen and make friends. As we grew, we had to move into another building and then another one after that and then to another one until we started renting this big, super-old, beautiful church with stained glass windows and a domed ceiling. Shortly after we moved in there we had to go to two services. All of this happened in a couple of years, and now Imago has about five hundred people coming and lots of them look like rock stars, but they are all brilliant and spiritual. I love the community so much it’s hard to describe. I have never felt such a feeling of family in all my life. I felt like I had nothing in terms of community and God brought a community up out of the ground, out of pure nothing like a magic trick. Like I said before, I never thought I would love church. But here is what I love about Imago-Dei. First: It is spiritual. What I mean is the people at Imago pray and fast about things. It took me a while to understand that the answer to problems was not marketing or program but rather spirituality. If we needed to reach youth, we wouldn’t do a pizza feed and a game night, we would get together and pray and fast and ask God what to do. God led some guys to start a homeless teen outreach downtown, and now they feed about one hundred homeless teenagers every week. It is the nuttiest youth group you will ever see, but that is what God said to do. I love that sort of thing because rather than the church serving itself, the church is serving the lost and lonely. It gives me chills when I think about it because it is that beautiful of a thing. Second: Art. Imago supports the arts. Rick isn’t much of an artist, but he turned things over to a guy named Peter Jenkins, who created the drawings for this book. Peter started an “artistery” where artists live and create art, teach art, and encourage people to be creative. Peter recently held a gallery opening in a local coffeehouse, and all the art was created by people who attend Imago. Artists feel at home at Imago. I even led a short-story group where we wrote short stories and then had a reading under Christmas lights and candles over at the artistery. I think there are artists at a lot of churches who don’t have an outlet, and by creating an outlet, the church gives artists a chance to express themselves and in return the church gets free stuff to put on their walls. Creating an arts group at a church is a great idea.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  I know that numbers shouldn’t matter very much, but to be honest I kind of wanted Imago to grow because I wanted my friends at my old church to know we were successful; but we didn’t grow, we stayed at about thirty. We’d meet on Sunday nights and then again on Wednesday nights for prayer. A lot less people showed up for prayer. There were only about ten of us, and it was pretty boring. It felt like an AA meeting gone bad. We’d sit around and talk about the crap in our lives, and then we’d pray for a little while, and then we would go home. One night Rick showed up sort of beaten-looking. He had been to some sort of pastors reception where a guy spoke about how the church has lost touch with people who didn’t know about Jesus. Rick said he was really convicted about this and asked us if we thought we needed to repent and start loving people who were very different from us. We all told him yes, we did, but I don’t think any of us knew what that meant. Rick said he thought it meant we should live missional lives, that we should intentionally befriend people who are different from us. I didn’t like the sound of that, to be honest. I didn’t want to befriend somebody just to trick them into going to my church. Rick said that was not what he was talking about. He said he was talking about loving people just because they exist—homeless people and Gothic people and gays and fruit nuts. And then I liked the sound of it. I liked the idea of loving people just to love them, not to get them to come to church. If the subject of church came up, I could tell them about Imago, but until then, who cared. So we started praying every week that God would teach us to live missional lives, to notice people who needed to be loved. Lots of people started coming to church after that. I don’t know why, honestly, except that we all agreed we would love people and be nice to them and listen and make friends. As we grew, we had to move into another building and then another one after that and then to another one until we started renting this big, super-old, beautiful church with stained glass windows and a domed ceiling. Shortly after we moved in there we had to go to two services. All of this happened in a couple of years, and now Imago has about five hundred people coming and lots of them look like rock stars, but they are all brilliant and spiritual. I love the community so much it’s hard to describe. I have never felt such a feeling of family in all my life.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  He would rebuke me, too, and he would tell me that I have prejudices against very religious people and that I need to deal with that; He would tell me that there are poor people in the world and I need to feed them and that somehow this will make me more happy. I think He would tell me what my gifts are and why I have them, and He would give me ideas on how to use them. I think He would explain to me why my father left, and He would point out very clearly all the ways God has taken care of me through the years, all the stuff God protected me from. [image "9780785263708_0251_003" file=Image00095.jpg] After I got Laura’s e-mail in which she told me she had become a Christian, I just about lost it with excitement. I felt like a South African the day they let Mandela out of prison. I called her and asked her to coffee at Palio. I picked her up in Eliot Circle at Reed, and she was smiling and full of energy. She said we had much to talk about, very much to talk about. At Palio, we sat in the booth at the back, and even though Laura had been my close friend, I felt like I had never met this woman. She squirmed in her seat as she talked with confidence about her love for Jesus. I sat there amazed because it is true. People do come to know Jesus. This crazy thing really happens. It isn’t just me. [image "9780785263708_0252_002" file=Image00096.jpg] I was watching BET one night, and they were interviewing a man about jazz music. He said jazz music was invented by the first generation out of slavery. I thought that was beautiful because, while it is music, it is very hard to put on paper; it is so much more a language of the soul. It is as if the soul is saying something, something about freedom. I think Christian spirituality is like jazz music. I think loving Jesus is something you feel. I think it is something very difficult to get on paper. But it is no less real, no less meaningful, no less beautiful. The first generation out of slavery invented jazz music. It is a music birthed out of freedom. And that is the closest thing I know to Christian spirituality. A music birthed out of freedom. Everybody sings their song the way they feel it, everybody closes their eyes and lifts up their hands. [image "9780785263708_0252_005" file=Image00097.jpg] I want Jesus to happen to you the way He happened to Laura at Reed, the way He happened to Penny in France, the way He happened to me in Texas. I want you to know Jesus too. This book is about the songs my friends and I are singing. This is what God is doing in our lives. But what song will you sing when your soul gets set free?

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Now you must let the first emotion work its magic on your empty stomach..." The Consul, Christian, Klothilde, Ida Jungmann, Mrs. Permaneder and Hanno were in the salon, and the latter two, not without effort, held up the family's dedication, a large commemorative plaque... The Consul hugged her elder with deep emotion. "My dear son, this is a beautiful day...a beautiful day..." she repeated. "We must never stop praising God in our hearts for all grace...for all grace..." She wept. The senator felt a weakness in that embrace. It was as if something inside him was loosening and leaving him. His lips trembled. A fading need filled him, to remain in his mother's arms, at her breast, in the delicate perfume that emanated from the soft silk of her dress, with his eyes closed, having to see and say no more... He kissed her and straightened up to offer his hand to his brother, who shook it with that half-absent, half-embarrassed expression he was used to at celebrations. Klothilde said something long and friendly. What Miss As for Jungmann, she confined herself to bowing very low, her hand toying with the silver watch chain that hung from her flat bosom... "Come here, Tom," said Frau Permaneder in a shaky voice; "We can't hold it any longer, Hanno and I." She carried the tablet almost alone, since Hanno's arms couldn't do much, and in her enthusiastic overexertion presented the image of an enraptured martyr. Her eyes were moist, her cheeks flushed, and the tip of her tongue played with her upper lip in an expression half desperate, half mischievous... "Yes, now to you!" said the senator. "What is that? Come on, let go, let's lean it against it.' He set the tablet upright against the wall next to the grand piano and stood in front of it, surrounded by his family. The heavy, carved walnut frame spanned a cardboard box, which showed the portraits of the four owners of the Johann Buddenbrook company under glass; The name and year were printed in gold under each. There was, made from an old oil painting, the picture of Johan Buddenbrooks, the founder, a tall and grave old gentleman, with tightly closed lips looking sternly and resolutely over his jabot; there was the broad and jovial face of Johann Buddenbrook, Jean Jacques Hoffstede's friend; then the Consul Johann Buddenbrook, with his chin tucked into his parricide, his broad and wrinkled mouth and his large, strongly hooked nose, kept his witty eyes, which spoke of religious enthusiasm, fixed on the spectator; and finally there was Thomas Buddenbrook himself, at a slightly younger age... A stylized, A golden ear of corn ran between the pictures, under which the numbers 1768 and 1868, also printed in gold, were prominently displayed next to each other.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  After Honker’s closed we would fill the café and play the juke box, the guys always choosing Springsteen and talking about life in New York, about life in the city. But more than they talked, they listened. So much of what I know about getting along with people I learned from the hippies. They were magical in community. People were drawn to them. They asked me what I loved, what I hated, how I felt about this and that, what sort of music made me angry, what sort of music made me sad. They asked me what I daydreamed about, what I wrote about, where my favorite places in the world were. They asked me about high school and college and my travels around America. They loved me like a good novel, like an art film, and this is how I felt when I was with them, like a person John Irving would write. I did not feel fat or stupid or sloppily dressed. I did not feel like I did not know the Bible well enough, and I was never conscious what my hands were doing or whether or not I sounded immature when I talked. I had always been so conscious of those things, but living with the hippies I forgot about myself. And when I lost this self-consciousness I gained so much more. I gained an interest in people outside my own skin. They were greater than movies to me, greater than television. The spirit of the hippies was contagious. I couldn’t hear enough about Eddie’s ballerina girlfriend or Owen’s epic poems. I would ask them to repeat stories because, to me, they were like great scenes in favorite movies. I cannot tell you how quickly these people, these pot-smoking hippies, disarmed me. Because I grew up in the safe cocoon of big-Christianity, I came to believe that anything outside the church was filled with darkness and unlove. I remember, one Sunday evening, sitting in the pew as a child listening to the pastor read from articles in the newspaper. He took an entire hour to flip through the paper reading about all the gory murders and rapes and burglaries, and after each article he would sigh and say, Friends, it is a bad, bad world out there. And things are only getting worse. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined there were, outside the church, people so purely lovely as the ones I met in the woods. And yet my hippie friends were not at all close to believing that Christ was the Son of God. This did not confuse me so much as it surprised me. Until this point, the majority of my friends had been Christians. In fact nearly all of them had been Christians. I was amazed to find, outside the church, genuine affection being shared, affection that seemed, well, authentic in comparison to the sort of love I had known within the church.