Pride

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 Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  I should have preferred to see their generosity take other forms than that of ostentation in alms, and to teach them to augment their possessions wisely in the interest of the community as they had done hitherto only for the enrichment of their children. With this intention I myself took over the direction of the imperial domains; no one has the right to treat the earth so unproductively as the miser does his pot of gold. Our merchants are sometimes our best geographers, our best astronomers, and our most learned naturalists. Our bankers number among our ablest judges of men. I made use of these special capacities, but fought with all my strength against their possibilities for encroachment. Subsidies given to shipbuilders had multiplied tenfold our trade with foreign nations; thus I succeeded in reinforcing our costly imperial fleet with but slight expense. So far as importations from the Orient and Africa are concerned, Italy might as well be an island, dependent upon grain dealers for its subsistence, since it no longer supplies itself; the only means of coping with the dangers of this situation is to treat these indispensable men of business as functionaries to be watched over closely. In recent years our older provinces have attained to a state of prosperity which can still perhaps be increased, but it is important that that prosperity should serve for all, and not alone for the bank of Herod Atticus, or for the small speculator who buys up all the oil of a Greek village. No law is too strict which makes for reduction of the countless intermediaries who swarm in our cities, an obscene, fat and paunchy race, whispering in every tavern, leaning on every counter, ready to undermine any policy which is not to their immediate advantage. In time of shortage a judicious distribution from the State granaries helps to check the scandalous inflation of prices, but I was counting most of all on the organization of the producers themselves, the vineyard owners in Gaul and the fishermen in the Black Sea (whose miserable pittance is devoured by importers of caviar and salt fish, middlemen battening on the produce of those dangerous labors). One of my best days was the one on which I persuaded a group of seamen from the Archipelago to join in a single corporation in order to deal directly with retailers in the towns. I have never felt myself more usefully employed as ruler.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  family, or any of them down. He could take it, he was tough, he knew it. He could make it through these thirteen weeks. And now they shouted for them to move out of the hangar that they seemed to have been in forever. “Right—face!” screamed the short sergeant. “Double time . . . MARCH!” screamed the sergeant again. And they began to move now, all eighty of them, with their fresh new clothing and their utility caps, their oversized belts hanging from their waists. They ran, dragging heavy sea bags packed full of new clothing and uniforms, like men bent in a gale. They stumbled and gasped across the huge parade deck past the great statue of the marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima, and he thought of John Wayne and the movies and Castiglia and for a moment his heart quickened. He felt good inside. He was proud of being on the island and getting the chance to become a marine. They looked like little schoolchildren being herded toward the long wooden barracks, all eighty of them now, stretched out in a long line, tripping over their pants, their caps spinning crazily around their heads, gasping for air, choking and spitting and coughing in the heat, their oversized boots thumping against the parade deck again and again, thumping until they sounded like a train slowly rolling into the station. He felt he couldn’t go on any farther and the drill instructors were still screaming. They had been screaming all day, all afternoon, all morning, ever since he got to that place they were screaming, screaming and shouting, cursing, screaming again, until it all sounded like one tremendous scream. He had to keep pushing, he thought. He had to make it to the long wooden squad bay. He had come this far, he thought. He hadn’t cried like the fat boy, he hadn’t fallen to his knees like a baby. He had come this far and he was gonna make it the rest of the way, with all of them. But now some were dropping out in back of him. He could hear the drill instructors shouting at them. They were falling to their knees in the evening heat onto the parade deck and he looked back and watched, still gasping for air, still not believing he had made it this far. There were boys on their knees—three, four, five, six—he couldn’t count them all, but they were on their knees with their sea bags still over their shoulders like Christs, and they were crawling, he saw them crawling! trying not to quit, trying to catch up with the rest. And he was thankful now he was still on his feet. Oh his legs ached and his chest felt like it was going to explode and his head was pounding now and his eyes were burning and he was getting closer and closer. Some men were cursing now, swearing and cursing like the drill instructors,

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

  Each particular group has its own distinctive set of ritual behaviors that help bind it together. These typically include mannerisms of speech, specific posture and facial expressions, as well as the more traditional ways of representing group belief. In the Moonies, for instance, we followed many Asian customs, such as taking off our shoes when entering a Moonie center, kneeling and bowing when greeting older members. Doing these little things helped make us feel we were special and superior. Psychologists call this “social proof.” If a member is not behaving sufficiently enthusiastically, they may be confronted by a leader and accused of being selfish or impure, or of not trying hard enough. They will be urged to become like an older group member, even to the extent of mimicking that person’s tone of voice. Obedience to a leader’s command is the most important lesson to learn. A cult’s leaders cannot command someone’s inner thoughts, but they know that if they command behavior, hearts and minds will follow. Information Control Information control is the second component of mind control. Information provides the tools with which we think and understand reality. Without accurate, up-to-date information, we can easily be manipulated and controlled. Deny a person the information they require to make sound judgments and they will become incapable of doing so. Deception is the biggest tool of information control, because it robs people of the ability to make informed decisions. Outright lying, withholding information and distorting information all become essential strategies, especially when recruiting new members. By using deception, cults rob their victims of “informed consent” and in the case of religious cults, this lack of honest disclosure most certainly violates people’s individual religious rights. In many totalistic cults, people have minimal access to non-cult newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and online information. Certain information may be forbidden and labeled as unhealthy: apostate literature, entheta (negative information), satanic, bourgeoisie propaganda, and so on. Members are also kept so busy that they don’t have free time to think and seek outside answers to questions. When they do read, it is primarily cult-generated propaganda or material that has been censored to keep members focused. Information control also extends across all relationships. People are not allowed to talk to each other about anything critical of the leader, doctrine, or organization. Members must spy on each other and report improper activities or comments to leaders, often in the form of written reports (a technique pioneered by the Nazis, with the Hitler Youth). New converts are discouraged from sharing doubts with anyone other than a superior. Newbies are typically chaperoned, until they prove their devotion and loyalty. Most importantly, people are told to avoid contact with ex-members and critics. Those people who could provide the most outside—that is, real—information are to be completely shunned. Some groups even go so far as to screen members’ letters and phone calls.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  My mom thought having a child was going to be like having a partner, but every child is born the center of its own universe, incapable of understanding the world beyond its own wants and needs, and I was no different. I was a voracious kid. I consumed boxes of books and wanted more, more, more. I ate like a pig. The way I ate I should have been obese. At a certain point the family thought I had worms. Whenever I went to my cousins’ house for the holidays, my mom would drop me off with a bag of tomatoes, onions, and potatoes and a large sack of cornmeal. That was her way of preempting any complaints about my visit. At my gran’s house I always got seconds, which none of the other kids got. My grandmother would give me the pot and say, “Finish it.” If you didn’t want to wash the dishes, you called Trevor. They called me the rubbish bin of the family. I ate and ate and ate. I was hyperactive, too. I craved constant stimulation and activity. When I walked down the sidewalk as a toddler, if you didn’t have my arm in a death grip, I was off, running full-speed toward the traffic. I loved to be chased. I thought it was a game. The old grannies my mom hired to look after me while she was at work? I would leave them in tears. My mom would come home and they’d be crying. “I quit. I can’t do this. Your son is a tyrant.” It was the same with my schoolteachers, with Sunday school teachers. If you weren’t engaging me, you were in trouble. I wasn’t a shit to people. I wasn’t whiny and spoiled. I had good manners. I was just high-energy and knew what I wanted to do. My mom used to take me to the park so she could run me to death to burn off the energy. She’d take a Frisbee and throw it, and I’d run and catch it and bring it back. Over and over and over. Sometimes she’d throw a tennis ball. Black people’s dogs don’t play fetch; you don’t throw anything to a black person’s dog unless it’s food. So it was only when I started spending time in parks with white people and their pets that I realized my mom was training me like a dog.

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

  Then I had her imagine herself as a time traveler. I instructed her to go back in time and teach the younger Sarah about mind control, so she could avoid the group’s recruiters. I asked her to imagine how differently her life would have turned out if she had never become involved with the group. This enabled her to see that with more information, she would have had more choices and could have averted the danger. This became very important for her later in her therapy. I asked her to re-experience, one at a time, traumatic cult experiences. This time, however, she could correct her responses. She told off one of the leaders in front of the members and angrily walked out of the cult. Even though she knew that we were just doing an exercise, it provided her the opportunity to channel her emotions constructively and reclaim her personal power and dignity. By standing up for herself and telling the cult leader to “Shove it!” she could walk out of the group on her own and avoid the trauma of the forcible deprogramming. Sarah knows that in reality, her parents did need to rescue her. However, through this process she was able to regain personal control over the experience. This was extremely important in order to enable Sarah to move forward with her life. Like everyone else in her position, she needed to take all the things she had learned, and all the people she had met and come to care for, and integrate them into a new sense of identity. Integrating the old into the new allows former members to be unusually strong. We are survivors. We have suffered hardship and abuse, and, through information and self-reflection, we are able to overcome adversity. Like all former members I have counseled, Sarah suffered from lack of trust in herself and others, and fear of commitment to a job or a relationship. By helping her to reprocess her cult experience, I was able to show her that she now has resources that the younger Sarah didn’t have, and that she is no longer the same person who was tricked and indoctrinated into a cult. She is older, smarter and wiser now. She knows on a very deep personal level that she can identify and avoid any situation in which she is being manipulated or used. She can rely more completely on herself, and if she needs assistance, she will be able to find what she needs. Likewise, she needs to not fear making commitments. She knows now to ask questions and keep on asking questions, and to distrust any job or relationship that requires anything that violates her core self, including her ethics and values.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  * * * There was a night not long after he had killed the corporal when he was walking on the wooden path that snaked around all the tents past the bunkers like a sidewalk. He was sort of tiptoeing along the casings and he opened up what seemed to be his tent. He had seen this light in the long crack at the bottom of it and he walked in to find he had just walked into the battalion commander’s tent. It was very dark, so dark somebody, anybody, could get lost in a place like that, he thought. Just like that goddamn patrol a few months ago when he had read the map wrong, when he had led the men in the wrong direction. He had been a thousand meters off. He was a mile from where he was supposed to be, and now he was doing it again. He was walking in on the goddamn battalion commander who was in his pajamas getting ready to go to bed or something. “Yes, what do you want, sergeant?” he heard the battalion commander saying to him. “Ahhh, nothing,” he said. “I made a mistake, sir. I thought this was my tent.” The battalion commander looked at him for a moment, looked at him like he had done a very stupid thing. “Well, carry on,” he said. * * * It was his friend the major who gave him his second chance. He called him into the command bunker one day and told him he wanted him to become the leader of his new scout team. The major who understood him told him he liked the way he operated and said he knew the sergeant could do a good job. Here was his chance, he thought, to make everything good again. This young, strong marine was getting a second crack at becoming a hero. He knew, he understood, the thing the major was doing for him, and he left the tent feeling stronger and better than he’d felt for a long time. Here was his chance, he thought over and over again. He walked down the twisting ammo-box sidewalk and saluted one of the officers as smartly as ever, much too smartly for anyone who had been over there as long as him. The thoughts of the night he’d killed the corporal were already becoming faded as he began to think more and more about the scout team, how he would train them and the things they would do to make up for all the things that had come before. He wrote in his diary that night how proud he was to have been made the leader of the scouts, to be serving America in this its most critical hour, just like

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

  But a man is the master of a free subject, by directing him either towards his proper welfare, or to the common good. Such a kind of mastership would have existed in the state of innocence between man and man, for two reasons. First, because man is naturally a social being, and so in the state of innocence he would have led a social life. Now a social life cannot exist among a number of people unless under the presidency of one to look after the common good; for many, as such, seek many things, whereas one attends only to one. Wherefore the Philosopher says, in the beginning of the Politics, that wherever many things are directed to one, we shall always find one at the head directing them. Secondly, if one man surpassed another in knowledge and virtue, this would not have been fitting unless these gifts conduced to the benefit of others, according to 1 Pet. 4:10, “As every man hath received grace, ministering the same one to another.” Wherefore Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xix, 14): “Just men command not by the love of domineering, but by the service of counsel”: and (De Civ. Dei xix, 15): “The natural order of things requires this; and thus did God make man.” From this appear the replies to the objections which are founded on the first-mentioned mode of mastership. OF THE PRESERVATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE PRIMITIVE STATE (FOUR ARTICLES)We next consider what belongs to the bodily state of the first man: first, as regards the preservation of the individual; secondly, as regards the preservation of the species. Under the first head there are four points of inquiry: (1) Whether man in the state of innocence was immortal? (2) Whether he was impassible? (3) Whether he stood in need of food? (4) Whether he would have obtained immortality by the tree of life? Whether in the state of innocence man would have been immortal?Objection 1: It would seem that in the state of innocence man was not immortal. For the term “mortal” belongs to the definition of man. But if you take away the definition, you take away the thing defined. Therefore as long as man was man he could not be immortal. Objection 2: Further, corruptible and incorruptible are generically distinct, as the Philosopher says (Metaph. x, Did. ix, 10). But there can be no passing from one genus to another. Therefore if the first man was incorruptible, man could not be corruptible in the present state.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  of the doctors and nurses who had earlier dismissed my belief that I would walk again. I said hello to everyone, including a few of the doctors and nurses who had warned me that for a high-level injury like my own—no use of my stomach muscles, and a spine that had been severed by a bullet—the odds against me walking again, much less even getting up on my feet, were astronomical. Some of them looked at me like I was crazy while still others chose to simply ignore me, turning their heads as I dragged myself past them. Of course, back then as a fiercely determined, twenty-one-year-old former Marine Corps sergeant just back from a war and a former high school athlete, I believed I could accomplish anything I set out to do. As far as I was concerned, like Jafu, nothing was impossible. I remember telling Jimmy Ford several weeks later that the only way I was going to leave the hospital was on my feet. “I’m going to walk out of this place, Jimmy, if it’s the last thing I do!” By late November of 1968, having been in the hospital a little over eleven months and my rehab now complete, I was finally ready to be released. I’ll always remember that last day at the hospital: Dick and Jimmy helping me put on my braces one last time, awkwardly dragging my body with my crutches out of the ADL room, Dick spotting me all the way across the hall and into the elevator where we rode down to the ground floor. “You can do it, Ronnie! You can do it. Careful, Ronnie. Careful now!” I had only a little farther to go before I reached the SCI parking lot where my brand-new hand-controlled Oldsmobile was parked. I struggled, dragging myself across the gravel lot, growing more and more determined—doing my best not to fall . . . trying not to lose my balance. “A little bit farther. A little bit farther! Keep going, Ronnie! Almost there, Ronnie!” shouted Dick. “Only a little more to go.” When we finally reached the car I leaned forward, still balancing myself on the crutches, and unlocked the door, and after opening it slowly I spun around, swinging myself into the seat. “I did it, Dick!” I shouted. “I told you I was going to walk out of this place.” I had triumphed. I had done it. After returning home to Massapequa, Long Island, I continued my rehabilitation, putting on braces every day, and just as I had dragged myself around the hospital, I now began to drag my body around the yard each day, seeing how far I could go, determined to continue my struggle to walk again. It was great to be home and as I progressed each day I would sometimes

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

  e lex Iulia was a momentous success, and one mea sure of its profound infl uence is that it subtly reshaped the vernacular of sexual honor. Th e Augustan laws protected the sexual honor of the mater familias, and the word became the Latin term for a woman with an all- encompassing sexual respectability, the equivalent of the Greek eleuthera, which had long denoted the married or marriageable woman. “We ought to accept as a mater familias she who has not lived dishonorably. For it is behavior that distinguishes and separates the mater familias from other women. So it matters not at all whether she is a married woman or a widow, a freeborn or freed woman, since neither marriages nor births make a mater familias, but good morals.” Social status and sexual behavior were inseparably fused, and the mater familias was defi ned by a mode of being, visibly projected in her comportment and appearance. It was assumed that a mater familias could be distinguished, in the way she dressed, from women without sexual honor, whose “servile” or “whorish” vestments advertised their social condition. Th e sexual life course of free women was dominated by the imperatives of marriage. In a society that was never freed from the relentless grip of a high- mortality regime, the burden of reproduction weighed heavily on the  F R O M S H A M E TO S I N female population. Th e demographic explosion of the Roman Empire, which pushed human settlement into every hill and vale, testifi es to a society that was constitutionally geared for reproduction and technologically incapable of putting brakes on its own fertility. Th e age structure of Greco-Roman marriage was an expression of the need to exploit female reproductive potential to the full, from menarche to menopause. For girls, marriage came early and inexorably. Th e legal age for marriage was twelve. Most girls married in their mid- teens. Th e higher classes may have married off their daughters latest of all, sometime in their late teens. Marriage was universal for women; there were no spinsters in antiquity. In a world where death rates were grievously high and unpredictable, early widowhood was common. Although the univira, the woman with only one husband, was idealized, in reality society could not aff ord to be too fastidious about remarriage, and serial marriage was widespread and unproblematic. It would not be hyperbolic to claim that ancient sexual morality, for men and women alike, was immanent in the age structure of marriage. Virginity at marriage was paramount for girls, an ideal rendered practical by early marriage. Th

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  I got another hiding and a second trip to the psychologist for that one. The third visit to the shrink, and the last straw, came in grade six. A kid was bullying me. He said he was going to beat me up, and I brought one of my knives to school. I wasn’t going to use it; I just wanted to have it. The school didn’t care. That was the last straw for them. I wasn’t expelled, exactly. The principal sat me down and said, “Trevor, we can expel you. You need to think hard about whether you really want to be at Maryvale next year.” I think he thought he was giving me an ultimatum that would get me to shape up. But I felt like he was offering me an out, and I took it. “No,” I told him, “I don’t want to be here.” And that was the end of Catholic school. Funnily enough, I didn’t get into trouble with my mom when it happened. There was no ass-whooping waiting for me at home. She’d lost the bursary when she’d left her job at ICI, and paying for private school was becoming a burden. But more than that, she thought the school was overreacting. The truth is she probably took my side against Maryvale more often than not. She agreed with me 100 percent about the Eucharist thing. “Let me get this straight,” she told the principal. “You’re punishing a child because he wants Jesus’s body and Jesus’s blood? Why shouldn’t he have those things? Of course he should have them.” When they made me see a therapist for laughing while the principal hit me, she told the school that was ridiculous, too. “Ms. Noah, your son was laughing while we were hitting him.” “Well, clearly you don’t know how to hit a kid. That’s your problem, not mine. Trevor’s never laughed when I’ve hit him, I can tell you.” That was the weird and kind of amazing thing about my mom. If she agreed with me that a rule was stupid, she wouldn’t punish me for breaking it. Both she and the psychologists agreed that the school was the one with the problem, not me. Catholic school is not the place to be creative and independent. Catholic school is similar to apartheid in that it’s ruthlessly authoritarian, and its authority rests on a bunch of rules that don’t make any sense. My mother grew up with these rules and she questioned them. When they didn’t hold up, she simply went around them. The only authority my mother recognized was God’s. God is love and the Bible is truth—everything else was up for debate. She taught me to challenge authority and question the system. The only way it backfired on her was that I constantly challenged and questioned her. —

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Their affair had ended badly. He descended into the dank grayness of the subway, relishing slightly her surprise appearance. He had never gone to work this way before. It was probably the route she always took. He wondered what kind of job she had; she had been wearing blue jeans stuffed into short, scuffed black boots and a tweed coat with a purple scarf folded around her neck. He wondered if it had embarrassed her to encounter him in a suit, obviously the holder of the better job. In college they had often discussed how one should deal with the world in order to become successful. He saw her ghost lying on its side on his rumpled sheets, resting on one elbow, her then-long hair lying randomly on her shoulders, telling him what she thought about success. He smiled a little. The subway banged harshly into view, and he pressed forward with the sleepy, odorous mass he joined each morning. He emerged in a cleaner area of Manhattan and entered the spinning glass doors of a gray building that was as grainy and oblong as a cartoon drawing of an office building in The New Yorker. He worked for an independent film distribution company that dealt mainly in foreign films. It was a prestigious place to work, and he was proud of himself for getting the job right after graduation. When he first started there, it had thrilled him to know that he could attend screenings of important films, take his friends to see them free, and meet famous people every now and then. The office was small and contained mixed knotty-legged furniture and the square orange desks of secretaries and assistants. There was a bulletin board tacked with magazine headings and photographs slabbed together. “Hi, Joel,” said the receptionist. She was echoed by two other assistants as he walked by. He stopped to chat with Cecilia, a colleague with whom he had had an affair during his first two years at the company. Now that it was over, they were friends and often had lunch. She talked to him about her date the night before. “I’m intrigued,” she said. “He’s done work for”—she named two fashionable directors—“and next summer, he’s going to France to work with Eric Rohmer. He’s very good-looking. And funny and intelligent. Everything.” “Sounds perfect. Where did Mr. Wonderful take you?” “The Gloucester House. That seafood place around Fiftieth?” “And then what?” She returned his playful leer and told him. He didn’t feel belittled by Cecilia’s wealthier, more prestigious boyfriends, partly, he supposed, because he felt that he had somehow joined their ranks sheerly by virtue of his affair with her.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  With the added disadvantage, to be sure, that these poor Jew bastards could not read the English language. Primarily I was directing myself toward Bunchek the cutter, who had a rabbinical mind. Opening the book I would pick a passage at random and read it to them in a transposed English almost as primitive as pidgin English. Then I would attempt to explain, choosing for example and analogy the things they were familiar with. It was amazing to me how well they understood, how much better they understood, let me say, than a college professor or a literary man or any educated man. Naturally what they understood had nothing to do finally with Bergson’s book, as a book, but was not that the purpose of such a book as this? My understanding of the meaning of a book is that the book itself disappears from sight, that it is chewed alive, digested and incorporated into the system as flesh and blood which in turn creates new spirit and reshapes the world. It was a great communion feast which we shared in the reading of this book and the outstanding feature of it was the chapter on Disorder which, having penetrated me through and through, has endowed me with such a marvelous sense of order that if a comet suddenly struck the earth and jarred everything out of place, stood everything upside down, turned everything inside out, I could orient myself to the new order in the twinkling of an eye. I have no fear or illusions about disorder any more than I have of death. The labyrinth is my happy hunting ground and the deeper I burrow into the maze the more oriented I become. With Creative Evolution under my arm I board the elevated line at the Brooklyn Bridge after work and I commence the journey homeward toward the cemetery. Sometimes I get on at Delancey Street, the very heart of the ghetto, after a long walk through the crowded streets. I enter the elevated line below the ground, like a worm being pushed through the intestines. I know each time I take my place in the crowd which mills about the platform that I am the most unique individual down there. I look upon everything which is happening about me like a spectator from another planet. My language, my world, is under my arm. I am the guardian of a great secret; if I were to open my mouth and talk I would tie up traffic. What I have to say, and what I am holding in every night of my life on this journey to and from the office, is absolute dynamite. I am not ready yet to throw my stick of dynamite. I nibble at it meditatively, ruminatively, cogently. Five more years, ten more years perhaps, and I will wipe these people out utterly. If the train in making a curve gives a violent lurch I say to myself fine! jump the track, annihilate them!

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  And so, just as naturally as in dream, I find myself once again drifting with the current, usually walking along a highway, my face set toward the sinking sun. Now all my faculties become alert. I am the most suave, silky, cunning animal—and I am at the same time what might be called a holy man. I know how to fend for myself. I know how to avoid work, how to avoid entangling relationships, how to avoid pity, sympathy, bravery, and all the other pitfalls. I stay in place or with a person just long enough to obtain what I need, and then I’m off again. I have no goal: the aimless wandering is sufficient unto itself. I am free as a bird, sure as an equilibrist. Manna falls from the sky; I have only to hold out my hands and receive. And everywhere I leave the most pleasant feeling behind me, as though, in accepting the gifts that are showered upon me, I am doing a real favor to others. Even my dirty linen is taken care of by loving hands. Because everybody loves a right-living man! Gottlieb! What a beautiful name it is! Gottlieb! I say it to myself over and over. Gottlieb Leberecht Müller! In this condition I have always fallen in with thieves and rogues and murderers, and how kind and gentle they have been with me! As though they were my brothers. And are they not, indeed? Have I not been guilty of every crime, and suffered for it? And is it not just because of my crimes that I am united so closely to my fellowman? Always, when I see a light of recognition in the other person’s eyes, I am aware of this secret bond. It is only the just whose eyes never light up. It is the just who have never known the secret of human fellowship. It is the just who are committing the crimes against man, the just who are the real monsters. It is the just who demand our fingerprints, who prove to us that we have died even when we stand before them in the flesh. It is the just who impose upon us arbitrary names, false names, who put false dates in the register and bury us alive. I prefer the thieves, the rogues, the murderers, unless I can find a man of my own stature, my own quality. I have never found such a man! I have never found a man as generous as myself, as forgiving, as tolerant, as carefree, as reckless, as clean at heart. I forgive myself for every crime I have committed. I do it in the name of humanity. I know what it means to be human, the weakness and the strength of it. I suffer from this knowledge and I revel in it also. If I had the chance to be God I would reject it. If I had the chance to be a star I would reject it.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  He wondered what kind of job she had; she had been wearing blue jeans stuffed into short, scuffed black boots and a tweed coat with a purple scarf folded around her neck. He wondered if it had embarrassed her to encounter him in a suit, obviously the holder of the better job. In college they had often discussed how one should deal with the world in order to become successful. He saw her ghost lying on its side on his rumpled sheets, resting on one elbow, her then-long hair lying randomly on her shoulders, telling him what she thought about success. He smiled a little. The subway banged harshly into view, and he pressed forward with the sleepy, odorous mass he joined each morning. He emerged in a cleaner area of Manhattan and entered the spinning glass doors of a gray building that was as grainy and oblong as a cartoon drawing of an office building in The New Yorker. He worked for an independent film distribution company that dealt mainly in foreign films. It was a prestigious place to work, and he was proud of himself for getting the job right after graduation. When he first started there, it had thrilled him to know that he could attend screenings of important films, take his friends to see them free, and meet famous people every now and then. The office was small and contained mixed knotty-legged furniture and the square orange desks of secretaries and assistants. There was a bulletin board tacked with magazine headings and photographs slabbed together. “Hi, Joel,” said the receptionist. She was echoed by two other assistants as he walked by. He stopped to chat with Cecilia, a colleague with whom he had had an affair during his first two years at the company. Now that it was over, they were friends and often had lunch. She talked to him about her date the night before. “I’m intrigued,” she said. “He’s done work for”—she named two fashionable directors—“and next summer, he’s going to France to work with Eric Rohmer. He’s very good-looking. And funny and intelligent. Everything.” “Sounds perfect. Where did Mr. Wonderful take you?” “The Gloucester House. That seafood place around Fiftieth?” “And then what?” She returned his playful leer and told him. He didn’t feel belittled by Cecilia’s wealthier, more prestigious boyfriends, partly, he supposed, because he felt that he had somehow joined their ranks sheerly by virtue of his affair with her. He did feel slightly humiliated by Cecilia’s speedy rise in the company, however, which had left him behind in the same job he’d been doing for three years. “My inner time clock isn’t the same as everyone else’s.” It occurred to him that he’d said that a long time ago to the phantom girl he’d seen on the street.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I have waded through it many times, up to the hips, but somehow I have neither been petrified nor immortalized. I am still burning brightly inside, though outwardly dead as a planet. From this bed I have gotten up to dance, not once but hundreds, thousands of times. Each time I came away I had the conviction that I had danced the skeleton dance on a terrain vague . Perhaps I had wasted too much of my substance on suffering; perhaps I had the crazy idea that I would be the first metallurgical bloom of the human species; perhaps I was imbued with the notion that I was both a sub-gorilla and a super-god. On this bed of ferroconcrete I remember everything and everything is in rock crystal. There are never any animals, only thousands and thousands of human beings all talking at once, and for each word they utter I have an answer immediately, sometimes before the word is out of their mouths. There is plenty of killing, but no blood. The murders are perpetrated with cleanliness, and always in silence. But even if everyone were killed there would still be conversation, and the conversation would be at once intricate and easy to follow. Because it is I who create it! I know it, and that is why it never drives me mad. I have conversations which may take place only twenty years hence, when I meet the right person, the one whom I shall create, let us say, when the proper time comes. All these talks take place in a vacant lot which is attached to my bed like a mattress. Once I gave it a name, this terrain vague : I called it Ubiguchi, but somehow Ubiguchi never satisfied me, it was too intelligible, too full of meaning. It would be better to keep it just terrain vague , which is what I intend to do. People think that vacuity is nothingness, but it is not so. Vacuity is a discordant fullness, a crowded ghostly world in which the soul goes reconnoitering. As a boy I remember standing in the vacant lot as if I were a very lively soul standing naked in a pair of shoes. The body had been stolen from me because I had no particular need of it. I could exist with or without a body then. If I killed a little bird and roasted it over the fire and ate it, it was not because I was hungry but because I wanted to know about Timbuktu or Tierra del Fuego. I had to stand in the vacant lot and eat dead birds in order to create a desire for that bright land which later I would inhabit alone and people with nostalgia. I expected ultimate things of this place, but I was deplorably deceived.

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

  Procreative intent distinguished marriage from all other relationships, and marriage contracts often included a purpose clause, procreandorum liberorum causa. But Justin is the earliest witness to the co- optation of this ideology for specifi cally Christian ends. For the Greeks and Romans, the procreative purpose of marriage located the relationship in a network of legal exchanges and transfers; it was certainly not seen as a palliative for the otherwise dubious exercise of sexual faculties. Justin, like so many Christians after him, turns the purpose of marriage into a mitigating factor, excusing the sexual use of the body. It is important, knowing the future, not to read too much into Justin’s rationalization of marriage. Procreation justifi ed marriage. Traditional discretion and conjugal privacy obviated the need to say more. Justin did not go so far as to say that procreation justifi ed sex, though it would be a short, fateful step from Justin to such a view. In apologetic mode, Justin simply needed to point to the rectitude of the Christians, who either remained celibate or married with most scrupulous intentions. Within only a few de cades the procreative purpose of marriage would gradually become a conceptual justifi cation for sex. Th e shadowy fi gure of Athenagoras, a Christian phi los o pher writing in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, took this fateful step. His Embassy is among the fi nest of the second-century apologies. Athenagoras accused the Romans of a litany of formulaic  F R O M S H A M E TO S I N sexual excesses. “Th ey set up a marketplace for fornication and set up unholy stations off ering every shameful plea sure to the young. Th ey refrain not even from males, men practicing terrible things with men. . . . Th ese adulterers and pederasts reproach us, who are eunuchs and monogamists.” Athenagoras focuses his disdain for contemporary sexual practice not on any lurid rumor of imperial debauchery, nor on improbable tales of private debasement, but rather on the institutionalized dispensations of plea sure, visible in the light of day. He pointed out that Christians owned slaves, whose omnipresent eyes were the surest form of surveillance in the Roman world, and yet no plausible charges against Christian chastity could be alleged. Th e exceptional purity of the Christians was emphasized by the fact that they, in obedience to the words of Jesus, did not even look with lust upon women. In an empire full of cities that off ered endless visual allurements, such restraint would have stood as no minor accomplishment. But ocular abstemiousness was not the end of Christian virtue. “Since we have a hope for eternal life, we hold in contempt the aff airs of this life, up to and including the pleasures of the soul. We consider her a wife whom we have taken according to our own laws, exclusively for the purpose of procreation.

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

  After the failed seduction, Leucippe’s virginal resolve is steeled, and she even refuses future opportunities to sleep with Clitophon. Leucippe does not so much develop as a character, as the story itself returns to conventional order. She becomes a romantic heroine to fit. The romance builds toward the final and gravest threat to her chastity, the gruesome scene in which her master, Thersander, attempts to rape her. Although the setting is a private encounter between a master and his slave, the elements of the scene are perfectly homologous with the escapes of Anthia and Tarsia from the public brothel. This scene is extremely conscious of itself and its place in the economy of romance. The villainy of Thersander is compounded by his brash refusal to believe that Leucippe has maintained her virginity through such arduous trials; thus he refused to believe in the romance as a package of happy conceits. His unwillingness to suspend disbelief, to allow this sort of literature to exist, is for the author almost as wicked as his eagerness to rape Leucippe. Leucippe, in this scene, at last becomes fully aware of her status as a romantic heroine; she taunts Thersander with the fact that his threats will only bestow greater glory on her, which would be a strange thing for a slave to say, after all, unless she knew she was a romantic heroine. She warns Thersander that her eleutheria, her freedom, will protect her. Achilles has contrived a brilliant scene in which eleutheria refers precisely to the heroine’s objective status rather than to her autonomy. For no coherent reason whatsoever, this claim deters Thersander from his malicious designs. Or rather, for no reason other than the bare logic of the romantic genre itself, in which the honorable protagonist will remain inviolate, does she retain her purity. Whereas Thersander refuses to believe in the rules of romance, Achilles Tatius asks the reader to believe solely out of convention rather than narrative plausibility. Leucippe’s mēchanē, her device of escape, is simultaneously the least convincing, and the most self-aware, of any in the genre.20

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  Tuesday nights, the prayer meeting came to my grandmother’s house, and I was always excited, for two reasons. One, I got to clap along on the beat for the singing. And two, I loved to pray. My grandmother always told me that she loved my prayers. She believed my prayers were more powerful, because I prayed in English. Everyone knows that Jesus, who’s white, speaks English. The Bible is in English. Yes, the Bible was not written in English, but the Bible came to South Africa in English so to us it’s in English. Which made my prayers the best prayers because English prayers get answered first. How do we know this? Look at white people. Clearly they’re getting through to the right person. Add to that Matthew 19:14. “Suffer little children to come unto me,” Jesus said, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” So if a child is praying in English? To White Jesus? That’s a powerful combination right there. Whenever I prayed, my grandmother would say, “That prayer is going to get answered. I can feel it.” Women in the township always had something to pray for—money problems, a son who’d been arrested, a daughter who was sick, a husband who drank. Whenever the prayer meetings were at our house, because my prayers were so good, my grandmother would want me to pray for everyone. She would turn to me and say, “Trevor, pray.” And I’d pray. I loved doing it. My grandmother had convinced me that my prayers got answered. I felt like I was helping people. — There is something magical about Soweto. Yes, it was a prison designed by our oppressors, but it also gave us a sense of self-determination and control. Soweto was ours. It had an aspirational quality that you don’t find elsewhere. In America the dream is to make it out of the ghetto. In Soweto, because there was no leaving the ghetto, the dream was to transform the ghetto. For the million people who lived in Soweto, there were no stores, no bars, no restaurants. There were no paved roads, minimal electricity, inadequate sewerage. But when you put one million people together in one place, they find a way to make a life for themselves. A black-market economy rose up, with every type of business being run out of someone’s house: auto mechanics, day care, guys selling refurbished tires.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Always, when we came forward in a group, I was signaled to stand apart; from birth I was favored that way, and, no matter what tribulations I went through, I knew they were not fatal or lasting. Also, another strange thing took place in me whenever I was called to stand forth. I knew that I was superior to the man who was summoning me! The tremendous humility which I practiced was not hypocritical but a condition provoked by the realization of the fateful character of the situation. The intelligence which I possessed, even as a stripling, frightened me; it was the intelligence of a “savage,” which is always superior to that of civilized men in that it is more adequate to the exigencies of circumstance. It is a life intelligence, even though life has seemingly passed them by. I felt almost as if I had been shot forward into a round of existence which for the rest of mankind had not yet attained its full rhythm. I was obliged to mark time if I were to remain with them and not be shunted off to another sphere of existence. On the other hand, I was in many ways lower than the human beings about me. It was as though I had come out of the fires of hell not entirely purged. I had still a tail and a pair of horns, and when my passions were aroused I breathed a sulphurous poison which was annihilating. I was always called a “lucky devil.” The good that happened to me was called “luck,” and the evil was always regarded as a result of my shortcomings. Rather, as the fruit of my blindness. Rarely did anyone ever spot the evil in me! I was as adroit, in this respect, as the devil himself. But that I was frequently blind, everybody could see that. And at such times I was left alone, shunned, like the devil himself. Then I left the world, returned to the fires of hell—voluntarily. These comings and goings are as real to me, more real, in fact, than anything that happened in between. The friends who think they know me know nothing about me for the reason that the real me changed hands countless times. Neither the men who thanked me, nor the men who cursed me, knew with whom they were dealing. Nobody ever got on to a solid footing with me, because I was constantly liquidating my personality. I was keeping what is called the “personality” in abeyance for the moment when, leaving it to coagulate, it would adopt a proper human rhythm. I was hiding my face until the moment when I would find myself in step with the world. All this was, of course, a mistake. Even the role of artist is worth adopting, while marking time. Action is important, even if it entails futile activity. One should not say Yes, No, Yes, No, even seated in the highest place.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  I would do my chores, and if I had anything to say I would write back. Because my mom was a secretary and I spent hours at her office every day after school, I’d learned a great deal about business correspondence. I was extremely proud of my letter-writing abilities. To Whom It May Concern: Dear Mom, I have received your correspondence earlier. I am delighted to say that I am ahead of schedule on the dishes and I will continue to wash them in an hour or so. Please note that the garden is wet and so I cannot do the weeds at this time, but please be assured this task will be completed by the end of the weekend. Also, I completely agree with what you are saying with regard to my respect levels and I will maintain my room to a satisfactory standard. Yours sincerely, Trevor Those were the polite letters. If we were having a real, full-on argument or if I’d gotten in trouble at school, I’d find more accusatory missives waiting for me when I got home. Dear Trevor, “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of discipline will remove it far from him.” —Proverbs 22:15 Your school marks this term have been very disappointing, and your behavior in class continues to be disruptive and disrespectful. It is clear from your actions that you do not respect me. You do not respect your teachers. Learn to respect the women in your life. The way you treat me and the way you treat your teachers will be the way you treat other women in the world. Learn to buck that trend now and you will be a better man because of it. Because of your behavior I am grounding you for one week. There will be no television and no videogames. Yours sincerely, Mom I, of course, would find this punishment completely unfair. I’d take the letter and confront her. “Can I speak to you about this?” “No. If you want to reply, you have to write a letter.” I’d go to my room, get out my pen and paper, sit at my little desk, and go after her arguments one by one. To Whom It May Concern: Dear Mom, First of all, this has been a particularly tough time in school, and for you to say that my marks are bad is extremely unfair, especially considering the fact that you yourself were not very good in school and I am, after all, a product of yours, and so in part you are to blame because if you were not good in school, why would I be good in school because genetically we are the same. Gran always talks about how naughty you were, so obviously my naughtiness comes from you, so I don’t think it is right or just for you to say any of this. Yours sincerely, Trevor