Love

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 In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Miri It was a perfect day at the Jersey Shore, breezy but not so breezy their hairstyles were ruined or the chuppah was in danger of blowing over. Miri was annoyed that Rusty thought she’d needed to lecture her that morning about how this was Henry and Leah’s big day and no matter what else was happening, no matter what else they were thinking or feeling, they were going to be happy for Henry and Leah. As if Miri needed to be told. As if she would come to Henry’s wedding and mope over her own loss. Although she felt her loss every minute of every day, her love for Henry was stronger. Leah’s mother was chatty but stayed close to Aunt Alma. She and Irene both wore beige at Leah’s request, a color that didn’t suit either of them. Irene draped a flattering pink floral scarf around her neck, and gave a matching scarf to Leah’s mother, who was grateful. Leah’s father didn’t mingle. Sy’s arthritis is bothering him, Leah’s mother explained to anyone who asked. Dr. O and Rusty decided it was too soon to be out together as a couple so he didn’t come to the wedding. But Ben Sapphire did, and he kept Leah’s father company, making sure he had enough to drink to be cheerful, but no more. Neither Leah’s sister, who had just finished her sophomore year at Ohio State, nor Miri had ever attended a wedding, let alone been bridesmaids. They were seated together at lunch—chicken à la king with crispy noodles and rice. Pamela joked that the restaurant must be part Chinese, part ladies’ tearoom, making Miri laugh, but it reminded her of going to lunch with Frekki before the play at the Paper Mill Playhouse. After the wedding cake was presented, after Leah fed a piece to Henry, and Henry fed a piece to Leah, and the couple were toasted with Champagne, and the photographer, Henry’s friend Todd Dirkson, captured it all, it was time for Leah to turn her back to the crowd and throw her bouquet over her shoulder. Rusty and Miri stepped out of the way. The bouquet landed in Irene’s hands, who treated it like a hot potato, quickly tossing it toward Leah’s friends, where Harriet Makenna caught it and promptly passed out. She was rescued by the photographer, who had met her when he’d covered the holiday party at the Elks Club. Once upon a time Miri had planned to wear her bridesmaid dress with its detachable organza overskirt to the ninth-grade prom, but she’d decided against going. When her friends saw the depth of her sadness they accepted her decision. In the same once-upon-a-time she’d thought she’d wear the dress to Mason’s junior prom, at Jefferson. She wondered if he’d go without her, if he’d go with someone else? She doubted it. Or maybe that was just what she was hoping. She couldn’t imagine ever wearing the dress again.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  can find nothing definite. He suggests many hypotheses. He also probes to discover my feelings about him, and I tell him about my interest in his books. I have a mischievous awareness that he expects me to become interested in him, and I don’t like playing the game while knowing it is a game. Yet my interest is sincere. I also tell him I don’t mind any more whether he admires me or not. And that is a victory over myself. It humiliates me to confess my doubts to him. So today I hated him. When I stood before him, ready to leave, I thought, “At this moment I have less confidence in myself than ever. It is intolerable.” With what joy I gave myself to Henry the following day. The house is asleep. The dogs are quiet. I feel the weight of solitude. I wish I were in Henry’s apartment, if only to dry the dishes he washes. I see his vest, unbuttoned, because the discarded suit given to him is too small for him. I see the very frayed lapel under which I love to slip my hand, the tie I finger while he talks to me. I see the blond hair on his neck. I see the expression he has when he takes the garbage can away, surreptitious, half ashamed. Ashamed, too, of his orderliness, which forces him to wash the dishes, to tidy the kitchen. He says, “This is what June objected to—said it was unromantic.” I remember, from Henry’s notes, the royal disorder she affected. I don’t know what to say. They are both in me: the woman who acts as Henry does and the woman who dreams of acting like June. Some vague tenderness draws me to Henry, so seriously washing the dishes. I cannot taunt him. I help him. But my imagination is out of the kitchen. I only love the kitchen because Henry is there. I have even wished that Hugo would stay away much longer so that I could live in Clichy. It is the first time I have ever wished such a thing. “It is this way,” says Henry. “I have overdrawn the cruelty and evil of June because I was interested in evil. That is just the trouble; there are no really evil persons in the world. June is not really evil. Fred is right. She tries desperately to be. It was one of the first things she told me the night I met her. She wanted me to think her a femme fatale. I’m inspired by evil. It preoccupies me, as it did Dostoevsky.”

• From Henry and June (1986)

  In the car she had been telling me about her friend Jean, the sculptress and poetess. “Jean had the most beautiful face,” and then she adds hastily, “I am not speaking of an ordinary woman. Jean’s face, her beauty was more like that of a man.” She stops. “Jean’s hands were so very lovely, so very supple because she had handled clay a lot. The fingers tapered.” What anger stirs in me at June’s praise of Jean’s hands? Jealousy? And her insistence that her life has been full of men, that she does not know how to act before a woman. Liar! She says, staring intently, “I thought your eyes were blue. They are strange and beautiful, gray and gold, with those long black lashes. You are the most graceful woman I have ever seen. You glide when you walk.” We talk about the colors we love. She always wears black and purple. We return to our seats. She turns constantly to me instead of to Hugo. Coming out of the theatre I take her arm. Then she slips her hand over mine; we lock them. She says, “The other night at Montparnasse I was hurt to hear your name mentioned. I don’t want to see cheap men crawl into your life. I feel rather . . . protective.” In the café I see ashes under the skin of her face. Disintegration. What terrible anxiety I feel. I want to put my arms around her. I feel her receding into death and I am willing to enter death to follow her, to embrace her. She is dying before my eyes. Her tantalizing, somber beauty is dying. Her strange, manlike strength. I do not make any sense out of her words. I am fascinated by her eyes and mouth, her discolored mouth, badly rouged. Does she know I feel immobile and fixed, lost in her? She shivers with cold under her light velvet cape. “Will you have lunch with me before you leave?” I ask. She is glad to be leaving. Henry loves her imperfectly and brutally. He has hurt her pride by desiring her opposite: ugly, common, passive women. He cannot endure her positivism, her strength. I hate Henry now, heartily. I hate men who are afraid of women’s strength. Probably Jean loved her strength, her destructive power. For June is destruction. My strength, as Hugo tells me later when I discover he hates June, is soft, indirect, delicate, insinuating, creative, tender, womanly. Hers is like that of a man. Hugo tells me she has a mannish neck, a mannish voice, and coarse hands. Don’t I see? No, I do not see, or if I see, I don’t care. Hugo admits he is jealous.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  brought her mistress to sleep) came into the chamber not as she was wont to do, for she seemed nothing pleasant neither in countenance nor talk, but with a sour face and frowning look, and began to speak slowly and fearfully in this sort: “Verily I confess that I have been the occasion of all thy trouble this day,” and therewithal she pulled out a whip from under her apron, and delivered it to me, saying: * Revenge thyself of me, mischievous harlot that I am, or rather slay me. Yet think not that I did willingly procure this anguish and sorrow unto you ; I call the gods to witness. For I had rather suffer mine own body to be punished than that you should receive or sustain any harm by my means, but that which I was bidden to do was wrought for some other purpose, but behold the unlucky chance for- tuned on you by mine evil occasion.” Then I, very envious and desirous to know the secret cause of the matter, answered: “ In faith," quoth I, * This most pestilent and evil-favoured whip (which thou hast brought to scourge thyself withal) shall first be broken in a thousand pieces, than it should touch or hurt thy delicate and dainty skin; but I pray you tell me truly what deed of yours has been turned by the perversity of fortune to my trouble and sorrow. For I dare swear by the love that I bear unto you that I will not be persuaded (though you yourself endeavour the same) that ever you went about to trouble or harm me : and moreover no chance, though it be uncertain or even unlucky, can make a crime of harmless and innocent intentions." When I had spoken these words, I perceived that Fotis's eyes Perey UON ecce UI ue EM disappear by haplography, owing to its resemblance to the preceding word. 121 LUCIUS APULEIUS : oculos Fotidis meae udos ac tremulos et prona libidine marcidos iam iamque semiadopertulos adnixis et sorbillantibus saviis sitienter haurie- bam. 15 Sie illa laetitia recreata “ Patere”’ inquit “ Oro, prius fores cubiculi diligenter occludam, ne sermonis elapsi profana petulantia committam grande flagi- tium"; et cum dicto pessulis iniectis et uncino firmiter immisso, sic ad me reversa colloque meo manibus ambabus implexa voce tenui et admodum diminuta, “ Paveo " inquit “ Et formido solide domus huius operta detegere et arcana dominae meae reve- lare secreta : sed melius de te doctrinaque tua prae- sumo, qui praeter generosam natalium dignitatem, praéter sublime ingenium, sacris pluribus initiatus profecto nosti sanctam. silentii fidem. Quaecumque itaque commisero huius religiosi pectoris tui pene- tralibus, semper haee intra consaeptum clausa cus- todias oro, et simplicitatem relationis meae tenaci- tate taciturnitatis tuae remunerare. Nam me, quae sola mortalium novi, amor is, quo tibi teneor, in- dicare compellit; iam scies omnem domus nostrae statum, iam scies herae meae miranda secreta, quibus obaudiunt manes, turbantur sidera, coguntug numina, serviunt elementa.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  — DAISY SPENDS TIME with Dr. O every day. An hour here, an hour there. Sometimes they tell each other jokes. Sometimes they reminisce. Other times they’re quiet. He sleeps, she reads. Rusty says it’s such a help to be able to call on her, to count on her. She still goes to the office three days a week. She still looks good, maybe because she gave up smoking when she moved to Las Vegas, maybe thanks to her condition. Who knows? That was so long ago. She can’t imagine life without Dr. O, her oldest, dearest friend, more than fifty years of working together, fifty years of friendship, of knowing everything about the other, except for one—she never knew, she never guessed about Dr. O and Rusty. How he managed to hide that from her she doesn’t know. Proves that everyone, even the person closest to you, can have secrets. — RUSTY’S LET her hair grow and doesn’t color it. She wears it in a braid hanging down her back. There’s something about her still-lovely face, silver hair and clear eyes that makes people turn and stare, the way they did when she was in her prime. She’s a western woman now, though she’s never felt comfortable on a horse, or driving long distances on her own. When Miri and Christina ask if they can plan an early eightieth birthday celebration for Dr. O the last weekend in March, she gives her blessing. That’s five weeks from now, she thinks. Who’s to say what will happen in the next five weeks? He’s made his wishes clear. No more treatment. Palliative care only. Don’t try to extend his life. He’s had a good run. Thirty-five fantastic years with you, my love. When he says that, she dissolves. She can’t bear the idea of losing him. “You’re strong,” he tells her. “Not anymore.” “I need you to be strong.” She nods. For him she’ll do anything. If he needs her to be strong, she’ll be strong. “I never expected to make it to eighty,” he says. “And I’m not talking about cancer. I expected God to strike me down for wanting you.” She smiles. “Arthur, you’re becoming religious in your old age?”

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  The gaps they left were filled in with glimpses of dingy undershirt. His jockey shorts had holes in them. Around one leg a broken elastic had popped out of the cotton seam and dangled against his thigh like a gray noodle. Since he wore a single pair of shorts for days on end the front pouch would soon be stained with yellow. He got up too late to shower before school; he’d run a hand through his fine hair but could never tame that high spume of a cowlick that tossed and bobbed above him, absurdly, gallantly. His rattiness wore a jaunty air that redeemed everything. Faded, baggy jeans, Indian moccasins he’d owned so long the soft leather tops had taken on the shape of his toes, sunglasses repaired with Band-Aids, an ancient purple shirt bleached and aged to a dusty plum, a letter jacket with white leather sleeves and on the back white lettering against a dark blue field—these were the accoutrements of a princely pauper, a paupered prince. We walked beside the lake at night, a spring night. As we walked we rolled gently into each other, so that our shoulders touched with every other step. A coolness scudded in off the lake and we kept our hands in our pockets. Now Tom had leaped up onto the narrow top of a retaining wall and was scampering along it in his moccasins. Although heights terrified me I followed him. The ground on both sides fell away as we crossed a canal flowing into the lake, but I put one foot in front of the other and looked not down but at Tom’s back. I prayed to a God I didn’t believe in to preserve me. Soon enough I was beside Tom again and my pulse subsided: that dangerous crossing was a sacrifice I’d made to him. Our shoulders touched. As usual he was talking too loud and in his characteristic way, a sustained tenor uh as he collected his thoughts, then a chuckle and a rapid, throw-away sentence that came almost as an anticlimax. Since Tom was the most popular boy at school, many guys had imitated his halting, then rushing way of talking (as well as his grungy clothes and haphazard grooming). But I never wanted to be Tom. I wanted Tom to be Tom for me. I wanted him to hold his reedy, sinewy, scruffy maleness in trust for us both. We were heading toward a concrete pier wide enough for a truck to run down. At the far end people were fishing for smelt, illegal lanterns drawing silver schools into nets. We ambled out and watched the lights play over that dripping, squirming ore being extracted from the lake’s mines.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  No longer. For the first time I found it exhilarating to be young and with someone young. I loved him, and the love was all the more powerful because I had to hide it. We slept in twin beds only two feet apart. We sat around for hours in our underpants and talked about Sartre and tennis and Sally and all the other kids at school and love and God and the afterlife and infinity. Tom’s mother never came to his door, as mine would have, to order us to sleep. The big dark house creaked around us as we lay on our separate beds in zany positions and talked and talked our way into the inner recesses of the night, those dim lands so tender to the couple. And we talked of friendship, of our friendship, of how it was as intense as love, better than love, a kind of love. I told Tom my father had said friendships don’t last, they wear out and must be replaced every decade as we grow older—but I reported this heresy (which I’d invented; my poor father had no friends to discard) only so that Tom and I might denounce it and pledge to each other our eternal fidelity. “Jesus,” Tom said, “those guys are so damn cynical! Jeez …” He was lying on his stomach staring into the pillow; his voice was muffled. Now he propped himself up on one elbow. His forehead was red where he’d been leaning on it. His face was loose from sleepiness. His smile, too, was loose, rubbery, his gaze genial, bleary. “I mean, God! How can they go on if they think that way?” He laughed a laugh on a high brass note, a toot of amazement at the sheer gall of grown-up cynicism. “Maybe,” I said suavely, “because we’re not religious, we’ve made friendship into our religion.” I loved ringing these changes on our theme, which was ourselves, our love; to keep the subject going I could relate it to our atheism, which we’d just discovered, or to dozens of other favorite themes. “Yeah,” Tom said. He seemed intrigued by this possibility. “Hold on. Don’t forget where we were.” He hurried into the adjoining bathroom. As I listened through the open door to the jet of water falling into the toilet I imagined standing beside him, our streams of urine crossing, dribbling dry, then our hands continuing to shake a final glistening drop of something stickier than water from this new disturbance, this desire our lifting, meeting eyes had to confess.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  “You’re moving in the middle of the school year?” Robo flushed. “I have no choice.” Natalie said only, “We’ll miss you.” Just that. Just the perfect thing to say. “Thank you, Nat.” They set their hair in pin curls, or socks, depending on the length, spread out their sleeping bags on the floor of Miri’s room and turned out the lights. Then, on cue, her four friends serenaded her in the dark. They try to tell us we’re too young. Too young to really be in love… Something about that song, something about the tender way they sang it to her, made Miri tear up. She loved her friends. She loved her family. She loved Mason. She couldn’t bear the idea of losing any of them. Ever. [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00016.jpg] [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00016.jpg] TRUCE TEAMS STILL WRANGLE OVER KOREA TAX INCREASES LOOMMUSAN, KOREA, JAN. 16 — Truce negotiators kept tempers in check today as they wrangled fruitlessly over terms of a Korean armistice. The only outburst came from a Chinese delegate who referred scornfully to America’s allies as “running dogs.” U.S. casualties to date total 104,084, with 15,950 killed, 75,374 wounded and 12,760 missing or held as prisoners. On the home front, facing a budget deficit because of the Korean War, President Truman has again proposed increasing taxes, the fourth time since the hostilities began. “We have to be fiscally responsible,” a presidential spokesman explained. But Congress seems more intent on finding ways to cut spending, especially in an election year. 11 [image "image" file=Image00005.jpg] [image file=Image00005.jpg] SteveOn Thursday, January 17, Steve Osner and his father flew to Boston for college interviews at Brandeis and Tufts. Steve had been to Syracuse with Phil Stein and his father, a Syracuse alum, a fraternity man, who was treated like the BMOC he must have been. Steve already knew Syracuse was his first choice but his father insisted he look at other schools, too. “Keep your options open, son.” He’d applied to the two Boston-area schools and he liked what he saw, but not enough to change his mind. His father took him to lunch between interviews at a Harvard Square restaurant. It was good to be alone with his father when he wasn’t on, singing to his patients or telling jokes. Even at home his father was always performing for Fern and Natalie, making them laugh at the dinner table. His mother was more proper, more concerned with doing things the right way, which was her way. Deep down he knew he was more like his mother, even though there were times when he wished he could be more like his father. “Nice-looking coeds,” his father said of the college girls at the restaurant. Steve agreed. Nice-looking coeds. But none so nice as Kathy Stein. He knew it had been very different for his father, who had grown up poor but strong-willed, working his way through college, then dental school.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Irene Ammerman and the late Max Ammerman, of Elizabeth, were married this afternoon by Rabbi Gershon B. Chertoff at the Hotel La Reine in Bradley Beach. The bride graduated from Ohio State University. The groom served in WWII with the Army in Europe. He is a graduate of Rutgers University and is a reporter for the Daily Post. The bride wore a tea-length dress of white dotted swiss with a pink sash and carried a bouquet of New Dawn roses and peonies. The groom’s sister, Mrs. Rusty Ammerman, of Elizabeth, was Matron of Honor. She wore a pale pink sheath. The two bridesmaids, Pamela Cohen, of Cleveland, sister of the bride, and Miri Ammerman, of Elizabeth, niece of the groom, wore matching dresses in deep pink cotton sateen. The couple will honeymoon in Atlantic City, before moving to their new home in Washington, D.C. 33 [image "image" file=Image00005.jpg] [image file=Image00005.jpg] MiriIt was a perfect day at the Jersey Shore, breezy but not so breezy their hairstyles were ruined or the chuppah was in danger of blowing over. Miri was annoyed that Rusty thought she’d needed to lecture her that morning about how this was Henry and Leah’s big day and no matter what else was happening, no matter what else they were thinking or feeling, they were going to be happy for Henry and Leah. As if Miri needed to be told. As if she would come to Henry’s wedding and mope over her own loss. Although she felt her loss every minute of every day, her love for Henry was stronger. Leah’s mother was chatty but stayed close to Aunt Alma. She and Irene both wore beige at Leah’s request, a color that didn’t suit either of them. Irene draped a flattering pink floral scarf around her neck, and gave a matching scarf to Leah’s mother, who was grateful. Leah’s father didn’t mingle. Sy’s arthritis is bothering him, Leah’s mother explained to anyone who asked. Dr. O and Rusty decided it was too soon to be out together as a couple so he didn’t come to the wedding. But Ben Sapphire did, and he kept Leah’s father company, making sure he had enough to drink to be cheerful, but no more. Neither Leah’s sister, who had just finished her sophomore year at Ohio State, nor Miri had ever attended a wedding, let alone been bridesmaids. They were seated together at lunch—chicken à la king with crispy noodles and rice. Pamela joked that the restaurant must be part Chinese, part ladies’ tearoom, making Miri laugh, but it reminded her of going to lunch with Frekki before the play at the Paper Mill Playhouse. After the wedding cake was presented, after Leah fed a piece to Henry, and Henry fed a piece to Leah, and the couple were toasted with Champagne, and the photographer, Henry’s friend Todd Dirkson, captured it all, it was time for Leah to turn her back to the crowd and throw her bouquet over her shoulder.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  the fake IDs falling out of Kenny’s wallet when they were stopped by the police on their way to hear the Grateful Dead. But they’ve made it through. They’re good young men. When the trio begins to play “It Had to Be You,” Dr. O gets up with help from his and Rusty’s sons, and he and Rusty slow-dance. Their grandchildren circle around them. They end with a kiss and immediately the trio plays “A Kiss to Build a Dream On.” The other guests get up to dance, led by Miri and Andy. She’s felt closer to him since the trip to Elizabeth, more appreciative. If he’s noticed, he hasn’t said anything. He looks down at her and smiles. “Nice party.” Tears spring to her eyes. “Thank you.” “Love you,” he says. “Love you, too.” — NATALIE ASKS for time alone with Dr. O the next day. Can she be trusted not to upset him? Miri wonders. Not to accuse him? Is it any of her business? She checks with Rusty, who asks Dr. O, who says yes, whatever Natalie has up her sleeve he can take it. Twenty minutes later Natalie comes out of his room. Miri is waiting. “Thanks for encouraging me to come now,” she says. “I needed to apologize to him. Instead, he apologized to me.” Natalie hugs Rusty for the first time since she was a young girl. “Thank you for making my father happy.” Rusty breaks down. — CHRISTINA ARRANGES for the plane to fly Natalie and Ruby back to Santa Fe. At the airport Natalie looks hard at Miri, then hugs her. “So long, cowgirl,” she says softly. “I’ll see you in my dreams.” “Not if I see you first,” Miri whispers into Natalie’s hair. Natalie strides out to the plane with Ruby. She turns back once and waves. Miri returns her wave. “You okay?” Christina asks, as the plane takes off. “I’m good,” Miri says, then adds, as if the thought has just popped into her head, “I think I’ll take a leave from the paper.” Christina looks at her. “This is sudden.” “I’ll be able to spend more time with Andy, meet you for lunch.” “And...” Christina says. “Maybe I’ll write a book. I might have a story to tell.” “It’s about time,” Christina says. As they lock arms, starting back to the car, Miri begins to sing. “Somewhere there’s music, how faint the tune...” Christina joins in. “Somewhere there’s heaven, how high the moon...” “Or maybe we can put together a sister act,” Christina says. “I know a guy who knows a guy who owns a hotel with a lounge in Vegas.”

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  The good which satisfieth this court is Alpha and Omega of all the scripture which love readeth to me with light or heavy stress.” That same voice which had removed my terror at the sudden dazzlement, set my concern again upon discourse, and said: “Yea, through a closer sieve thou needs must strain; needs must thou tell me what it was that aimed thy bow at such a targe.” And I: “By philosophic arguments and by authority which down-cometh hence, such love must needs stamp itself on me; for good, as good, so far as understood, kindleth love, and so much more by how much more of excellence it graspeth in itself. 2 Therefore to the Essence which hath such privilege that whatsoever good he found outside of it is nought else save a light of its own ray, more than to any other must the mind needs move, in love, of whoso doth discern the truth whereon this proof is founded. 3 And this same truth is made level to my intellect by him who doth reveal to me the primal love of all the eternal beings. 4 It is made level to me by the voice of that veracious author who saith to Moses speaking of himself; I will cause thee to see all worth. 5 It is made level to me by thee also, where thou openest the lofty proclamation which doth herald upon earth the secrets of this place above all other declaration.” 6 And I heard: “As urged by human intellect and by authorities concordant tvith it, of thy loves keep for God the sovereign one. But tell me yet if thou feel other cords draw thee towards him, so that thou utter forth with how many teeth this love doth grip thee.” Not hidden was the sacred purpose of Christ’s eagle, 7 but rather I perceived whither he willed to lead on my profession. Wherefore I began again: “All those toothgrips which have power to make the heart turn unto God co-work upon my love; for the being of the world and my own being, the death that he sustained that I might live, and that which each believer hopeth, as do I, together with the aforesaid living consciousness, have drawn me from the sea of the perverted and placed me on the shore of the right love.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRIST OUR EXAMPLE SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EASTER.—(FROM THE EPISTLE)“Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow His steps.”—1 S. Peter 2:21. FIVE things are noted in this Epistle—firstly, the innocence of Our Lord, “Who did no sin;” secondly, His great patience, “When He suffered, threatened not;” thirdly, His inexpressible charity, “Who His own self bear our sins in His own Body”; fourthly, the manifold benefits flowing from these three, “By Whose stripes ye were healed;” fifthly, the steps in which we should follow Christ. I. On the first head it is to be noted, that His innocence is shown in three ways—(1) Because he did no sin: Heb. 7:26, “Holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.” (2) Because He never deceived: “Neither was guile found in His mouth.” 2 Cor. 1:19, 20, “The Son of God, Jesus Christ … was not yea and nay, but in Him was yea. For all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him Amen.” (3) Because He never did any injury to anyone: “Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again.” Isa. 53:7, “As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth.” II. On the second head it is to be noted, that His patience in His Passion is shewn in three ways—(1) In that He voluntarily offered Himself: “Committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously.” Isa. 53:7 (Vulg.), “He was offered because it was His own will.” (2) Because, unjustly judged, He endured it with the greatest patience. It requires the greatest patience to sustain an unjust sentence: S. John 10:32, “Many good works have I shewed you … for which of those works do ye stone Me?” 1 S. Pet. 2:19, “This is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully.” (3) Because He did not utter threats against His crucifiers: “When He suffered He threatened not.” Jer. 11:19, “But I was like a lamb … that is brought to the slaughter.” He prayed for them: Isa. 53:12, “Made intercession for the transgressors,” that they should not perish. III. On the third head it is to be noted, that the inexpressible charity of Christ is shown in three ways—(1) Because He Himself bore our sins: S. John 1:29, “Behold the Lamb of God, Who taketh away the sins of the world.” (2) In the manner of His Oblation: “In his own Body.” Isa. 53:5, “He was wounded for our iniquities,” &c. (3) Because He sustained so cruel a death for the taking away of our sins: “On the Tree”—i.e., the Cross. Phil. 2:8, “Obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.”

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  After all this, I have neglected to say the most important thing of all—namely, that I was madly in love with him (with the accent on the mad). The cynicism came later. To me he was not a pompous, pimply young man, but a figure of legendary charm, a future Lenny Bernstein. I knew that his family (with their champagne-silk, decorator-decorated living-room-under-plastic-covers) was a hundred times more vulgar even than mine. I sensed that Charlie was more snobbish than he was intelligent. I knew he never bathed, never used deodorant, and wiped his ass inadequately (as if he were still hoping his mommy would come to the rescue), but I was crazy about him. I let him condescend to me. After all, he was a devotee of the most universal of the arts: music. I was a lowly, literal-minded scribe. Most important, he was a piano player like my piano-playing father. When he sat down at the keyboard, my underpants got wet. Those continuos! Those crescendos! Those sharps! Those flats! You know that awful expression “tickle the ivories"? That was how Charlie drove me wild. Sometimes we even used to fuck on the piano bench with the metronome going. We met in a funny way. On television. What can be funnier than a poetry reading on television? It isn’t poetry and it isn’t television. It’s “educational"—if you’ll excuse the expression. The program was on Channel 13 and it was a kind of salad of the seven arts—none of them lively. Why it was considered educational was anyone’s guess. There were seven young “artists” each of whom had four minutes to do his (or her) stuff. Then there was a puffy-eyed, pipe-smoking old fart with a name like Phillips Hardtack who interviewed each of us, asking us incisive questions like “what, in your opinion, is Inspiration?” or “what influence did your childhood have on your work?” For these questions (and about ten others) another four minutes was allotted. Apart from hosting shows like this, Hardtack hacked out his living writing book reviews and posing for whiskey ads—two occupations which have more in common than appears on the surface. The Scotch was always “light” and “mild” and the books were always “stark” and “powerful.” All you had to do was crank Hardtack up and out came the adjectives. Sometimes, however, he got them confused and called a book “light” and “mild” while he called the Scotch “stark” and “powerful.” For twenty-year-old Scotch and geriatric authors who had published memoirs, Hardtack reserved the word “mellow.” And for young authors and Brand X’s Scotch, Hardtack had this automatic response: “Lacks smoothness.”

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  SIXParoxysms of Passion or the Man Under the Bed Among all the forms of absurd courage, the courage of girls is outstanding. Otherwise there would be fewer marriages and still less of the wild ventures that override everything, even marriage…. —Colette Not that falling madly in love was at all unusual for me. All year I had fallen in love with everyone. I fell in love with an Irish poet who kept pigs on a farm in Iowa. I fell in love with a six-foot-tall novelist who looked like a cowboy and only wrote allegories about the effects of radiation. I fell in love with a blue-eyed book reviewer who had raved about my first book of poems. I fell in love with a surly painter (whose three wives had all committed suicide). I fell in love with a very courtly professor of Italian Renaissance philosophy who sniffed glue and screwed freshman girls. I fell in love with a UN interpreter (Hebrew, Arabic, Greek) who had five children, a sick mother, and seven unpublished novels in his sprawling apartment on Morningside Drive. I fell in love with a pale WASP of a biochemist who took me to lunch at the Harvard Club and had been married to two other women writers—both of them nymphomaniacally inclined. But nothing came of anything. Oh there were cuddles in the backs of cars. And long drunken kisses in roachy New York kitchens over pitchers of warm martinis. And there were flirtations over fattening expense-account lunches. And pinches in the stacks of Butler Library. And embraces after poetry readings. And hand squeezes at gallery openings. And long meaningful telephone conversations and letters heavy with double entendres. There were even some frank and open propositions (usually from men who didn’t attract me at all). But nothing came of anything. I would go home instead, and write poems to the man I really loved (whoever he might be). After all, I had screwed enough guys to know that one prick wasn’t that different from the next. So what was I looking for? And why was I so restless? Maybe I resisted consummating any of these flirtations because I knew that the man I really wanted would continue to elude me and I would only wind up disappointed. But who was the man I really wanted? All I knew was that I had been desperately searching for him from the age of sixteen on.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  The trees arching above the deserted suburban streets tracked slowly past overhead, their crowns dark against a hazy white night sky, clouds lit up like internal organs dyed for examination, for augury … I spoke quietly, deliberately, to Helen Paper and I snatched glances of her famous smile rising to greet my words. Our attention wasn’t given over to words but to the formal charting of that night street that we were executing. I mean we, or rather our bodies, the animal sense in us, some orienting device—we were discovering each other, and for one moment I felt exultantly worthy of her. For she did have the power to make me seem interesting, at least to myself. I found myself talking faster and with more confidence as we approached the wide, dimly lit porch of her house. Some late roses perfumed the night. A sprinkler someone had left on by mistake played back and forth over the grass. A sudden breeze snatched up the spray and flung it on the walkway ahead, a momentary darkening of the white pavement. Inside, upstairs, a room was just barely lit behind a drawn curtain. Crickets took the night’s pulse. Although I said something right out of dancing school to Helen—“Good night, it’s been great to spend some time with you”—an unexpected understanding had fallen on us. Of course her allure—the sudden rise and fall of her wonderful soft breasts, the dilation of her perfume on the cool night air, the smile of a saint who points, salaciously, toward heaven—this allure had seduced me entirely. I loved her. I didn’t know what to do with her. I suspected another, more normal boy would have known how to tease her, make her laugh, would have treated her more as a friend and less as an idol. Had I been expected to do something I would have fled, but now, tonight, I did love her, as one might love a painting one admired but didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t own. She was completely relaxed when she took my hand and looked in my eyes, as she thanked me and bobbed a curtsy in a little-girl manner other men, I’m sure, liked better than I; sensing my resistance to anything fetching, she doubled back and intensified her gravity. By which I’m not suggesting she was playing a part. In fact, I don’t know what she was doing. Because I loved her she was opaque to me, and her sincerity I doubted not at all until I doubted it completely.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  This is a confession: I love you [so the letter began; and for a distorted moment I mistook its hysterical scrawl for a schoolgirl’s scribble]. Last Sunday in church—bad you, who refused to come to see our beautiful new windows!—only last Sunday, my dear one, when I asked the Lord what to do about it, I was told to act as I am acting now. You see, there is no alternative. I have loved you from the minute I saw you. I am a passionate and lonely woman and you are the love of my life. Now, my dearest, dearest, mon cher, cher monsieur, you have read this; now you know. So, will you please, at once, pack and leave. This is a landlady’s order. I am dismissing a lodger. I am kicking you out. Go! Scram! Departez! I shall be back by dinnertime, if I do eighty both ways and don’t have an accident (but what would it matter?), and I do not wish to find you in the house. Please, please, leave at once, now, do not even read this absurd note to the end. Go. Adieu. The situation, chéri, is quite simple. Of course, I know with absolute certainty that I am nothing to you, nothing at all. Oh yes, you enjoy talking to me (and kidding poor me), you have grown fond of our friendly house, of the books I like, of my lovely garden, even of Lo’s noisy ways—but I am nothing to you. Right? Right. Nothing to you whatever. But if, after reading my “confession,” you decided, in your dark romantic European way, that I am attractive enough for you to take advantage of my letter and make a pass at me, then you would be a criminal—worse than a kidnaper who rapes a child. You see, chéri. If you decided to stay, if I found you at home (which I know I won’t—and that’s why I am able to go on like this), the fact of your remaining would only mean one thing: that you want me as much as I do you: as a lifelong mate; and that you are ready to link up your life with mine forever and ever and be a father to my little girl.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  This done I retired to the service of the goddesse in hope of greater benefits, considering I had received a signe and token, whereby my courage increased every day more and more to take upon me the orders and sacraments of the temple: insomuch that I oftentimes communed with the Priest, desiring him greatly to give me the degree of the religion, but he which was a man of gravitie, and well renowned in the order of priesthood, deferred my affection from day to day, with comfort and better hope, as parents commonly bridle the desires of their children, when they attempt or indeavour any unprofitable thing, saying, that the day when any one should be admitted into their order is appointed by the goddesse, the Priest which should minister the sacrifice is chosen by her providence, and the necessary charges of the ceremonies is alotted by her commandement, all which things he willed me to attend with marvailous patience, and that I should beware either of too much hastinesse, or too great slacknesse, considering that there was like danger, if being called I should delay: or not called I should be hasty: moreover he said that there was none of his company either of so desperate a mind, or so rash and hardy, as to enterprise any thing without the commandernent of the goddesse, whereby he should commit a deadly offence, considering that it was in her power to damne and save all persons, and if any were at the point of death, and in the way to damnation, so that he were capable to receive the secrets of the goddesse, it was in her power by divine providence to reduce him to the path of health, as by a certaine kind of regeneration: Finally he said that I must attend the celestiall precept, although it was evident and plaine, that the goddesse had already vouchsafed to call and appoint me to her ministery, and to will me refraine from prophane and unlawfull meates, as those Priests which were already received, to the end I might come more apt and cleane to the knowledge of the secrets of religion. Then was I obedient unto these words, and attentive with meek quietnesse, and probable taciturnity, I daily served at the temple: in the end the wholesome gentlenesse of the goddesse did nothing deceive me, for in the night she appeared to me in a vision, shewing that the day was come which I had wished for so long, she told me what provision and charges I should be at, and how that she had appointed her principallest Priest Mythra to be minister with me in my sacrifices.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  There’re also three more yank interns downstairs (one from Boston!), so I feel pretty much at home. I’m a kind of an intern with the duties of a PA – organizing lunches, filing, talking to people on the phone, that sort of thing. Monty’s work is much more than just the academic stuff: he’s involved with the Race Commission, and he has Church charities in Barbados, Jamaica, Haiti, etc. – he keeps me really busy. Because it’s such a small set-up, I get to work closely with him – and of course I’m living with the family now, which is like being completely integrated into something new. Ah, the family. You didn’t respond, so I’m imagining your reaction (not too hard to imagine . . .). The truth is, it was really just the most convenient option at the time. And they were totally kind to offer – I was being evicted from the ‘bedsit’ place in Marylebone. The Kippses aren’t under any obligation to me , but they asked and I accepted – gratefully. I’ve been in their place a week now, and still no mention of any rent, which should tell you something. I know you want me to tell you it’s a nightmare, but I can’t – I love living here. It’s a different universe. The house is just wow – early Victorian, a ‘terrace’ – unassuming-looking outside but  On Beauty massive inside – but there’s still a kind of humility that really appeals to me – almost everything white, and a lot of handmade things, and quilts and dark wood shelves and cornices and this four-storey staircase – and in the whole place there’s only one television, which is in the basement anyway, just so Monty can keep abreast of news stuff, and some of the things he does on the television – but that’s it. I think of it as the negativized image of our house sometimes . . . It’s in this bit of North London called ‘Kilburn’, which sounds bucolic, but boy oh boy is not bucolic in the least, except for this street we live on off the ‘high road’, and it’s suddenly like you can’t hear a thing and you can just sit in the yard in the shadow of this huge tree – eighty feet tall and ivy-ed all up the trunk . . . reading and feeling like you’re in a novel . . . Fall’s different here – much less intense and trees balder earlier – everything more melancholy somehow.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  in their decorated Mini Coopers. They are mistaken. To appreciate Cricklewood you have to walk its streets, as Howard did that afternoon. Then you find out that there is more charm in a half-mile of Cricklewood’s passing human faces than in all the double-fronted Georgian houses in Primrose Hill. The African women in their colourful kenti cloths, the whippet blonde with three phones tucked into the waistband of her tracksuit, the unmistakable Poles and Russians introducing the bone structure of Soviet Realism to an island of chinless, browless potato-faces, the Irish men resting on the gates of housing estates like farmers at a pig fair in Kerry . . . At this distance, walking past them all, thus itemizing them, not having to talk to any of them , flaˆneur Howard was able to love them and, more than this, to feel himself, in his own romantic fashion, to be one of them. We scum, we happy scum! From people like these he had come. To people like these he would always belong. It was an ancestry he referred to proudly at Marxist conferences and in print; it was a communion he occasionally felt on the streets of New York and in the urban outskirts of Paris. For the most part, however, Howard liked to keep his ‘working-class roots’ where they flourished best: in his imagination. Whatever the fear or force that had thrust him from Carlene Kipps’s funeral out on to these cold streets was what now compelled him to make this rare trip: down the Broadway, past the McDonald’s, past the halal butchers, second road on the left, to arrive here, at No.  with the thick glass panel in the door. The last time he stood on this doorstep was almost four years ago. Four years! That was the summer when the Belsey family had considered returning to London for Levi’s secondary education. After a disappointing reconnaissance of North London schools, Kiki insisted upon visiting No. , for old times’ sake, with the kids. The visit did not go well. And since then only a few phone calls had passed between this house and  Langham, along with the usual cards on birthdays and anniversaries. Although Howard had visited London often in recent times, he had never stopped at this door. Four years is a long time. You don’t stay away for four years without good reason. As soon as his finger pressed the bell, Howard knew he’d made a mistake. He waited – nobody  on beauty and being wrong came. Radiant with relief, he turned to go. It was the perfect visit: well intended but with no one at home. Then the door opened. An elderly woman he did not know stood before him with a nasty bunch of flowers in her hand – many carnations, a few daisies, a limp fern and one wilted star-gazer lily. She smiled coquettishly like a woman a quarter of her age greeting a suitor half Howard’s.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  She would be ten in November, I had been ten in April. Attention was drawn to a jagged bit of violet mussel shell upon which she had stepped with the bare sole of her narrow long-toed foot. No, I was not English. Her greenish eyes seemed flecked with the overflow of the freckles that covered her sharp-featured face. She wore what might now be termed a playsuit, consisting of a blue jersey with rolled-up sleeves and blue knitted shorts. I had taken her at first for a boy and then had been puzzled by the bracelet on her thin wrist and the corkscrew brown curls dangling from under her sailor cap. [...] During the two months of our stay at Biarritz, my passion for Colette all but surpassed my passion for Cleopatra. Since my parents were not keen to meet hers, I saw her only on the beach; but I thought of her constantly. If I noticed she had been crying, I felt a surge of helpless anguish that brought tears to my own eyes. I could not destroy the mosquitoes that had left their bites on her frail neck, but I could, and did, have a successful fistfight with a red-haired boy who had been rude to her. She used to give me warm handfuls of hard candy. One day, as we were bending together over a starfish, and Colette's ringlets were tickling my ear, she suddenly turned toward me and kissed me on the cheek. So great was my emotion that all I could think of saying was, "You little monkey."