Surprise

Passages

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

Page 49 of 73 · 20 per page

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  Muhammad introduced me to a different world. I began to be invited to interfaith gatherings, and gained a new circle of friends. I was surprised and moved that I—a woman and a kafir—should be invited to speak to Muslims on the occasion of their Prophet’s birthday, and wondered if Christians would be prepared to invite a Muslim to address their congregation on Christmas Day—the birthday of the prophet Jesus, who is, of course, greatly revered in Islam. These gatherings were not entirely an unmixed delight, however. I had no problem accommodating Muslim faith, but as an uptight Westerner who hates to be late, I sometimes had difficulty coming to terms with the relaxed Oriental attitude to punctuality. I once got up to speak at the time when my host had suggested that I order the taxi to take me home. And what was a wine-loving lady like me doing at a dinner where you could hope only for a stiff mineral water on the rocks? On one occasion, I sat on the high table next to an eminent Sufi sheikh who, to the dismay of his followers in the hall, refused to address a single word to me. Eventually I gave up and turned to my other neighbor, an ambassador from one of the Muslim countries, who was a delight. As the evening ground on, lecture following lecture, he leaned toward me confidentially. “Tell me, what is your advice?” he muttered. “Should I speak for a long, or short, time?” “Oh—as short as you possibly can!” I whispered back. “Look at them!” Hundreds of people on the floor below were gazing in our direction with the glazed, punch-drunk expression of those who have listened to too many speeches. The ambassador, who was to sum up the proceedings, was introduced with a long, elaborate encomium. He approached the mike, and glanced back at me. “Short!” I mouthed back. He certainly took me at my word. “Thank you very much and all the best!” he cried, and sat down, to the consternation of our hosts but to thunderous applause from the floor. On one such occasion I met Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Magonet, principal of the Leo Baeck College, the chief academy for Reform Judaism in Europe, which happened to be near my house in Finchley. He later asked me if I would like to teach Christianity to his fourth-year rabbinical students. I agreed, and found that I looked forward to the classes. It was fun to teach future rabbis about the Trinity and the Incarnation, and the students were wonderful: open and enthusiastic, welcoming me for the most part with genuine affection. And I noticed that during these classes, feeling loved and appreciated, I became a more lovable person and that my ideas flowed more freely. It was an important lesson.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  148 ATHEOLOGY FORTHESOCIAL GOSPEL doctrines.The speculative problem of christological dogma was howthedivineand human naturesunited intheone person of Christ; the problem of the social gospel is how thedivinelife ofChristcan get control ofhuman society. Thesocial gospel is concerned about a progressive socialincarnationof God. The social gospel isbelieved by trinitariansand Uni- tarians alike, by Catholic Modernists and KansasPres- byterians ofthemostcerulean colour. It arouses a freshandwarm loyalty to Christ wherever it goes, though not always a loyalty to theChurch. All who be- lievein itareat one in desiring the spiritual sovereignty of Christ in humanity. Their attitudeto the problems ofthecreeds will usually be determined by otherinflu- ences. Yettherearecertain qualities in the social gospel which may createa feeling of apathy towardthe specu- lative questions. It is modernandis out forrealities. It isethical andwants ethicalresults from theology. It issolidaristicand feelshomesick in theatomisticdesert of individualism. The social gospel joins with all modern thought in the feeling thatthe old theology doesnot give us a Christ who is truly personal. Just as the human race, whenit appears in theology, is an amorphous metaphys- ical conception which could be more briefly designated by an algebraic symbol, in the same way the personality of Jesus isnot allowedtobe realunder theological in- fluence. If it does stand out vital and resolute, itis in spite of theology andnot becauseof it. Some ofthe INITIATOR OFTHE KINGDOM OF GOD 149 greatest theologians, men who wrote epoch-making treatises about Christ, such as Athanasius, give no indi- cation that the personality of Jesus wasliveand real to them. When thosewho havebeentrainedunder the old religious beliefs come underthe influenceof his- torical teaching, the realization that Jesus was actually a person, and not merelypart of a " scheme of redemp- tion," often comes as a great and beneficent shock.He has been made part ofa schemeof salvation, the second premise in a great syllogism. Thesocial gospel wants tosee a personality able to win hearts, dominatesitua- tions, able to bind men in loyalty and make them think like himself, and to set revolutionary social forces in motion. Every event and saying in the lifeof Christ has, of course, been scanned intensely and used overandover for edification or theological proof. Butin the main the theologicalsignificance of thelife of Christ hasbeen comprised in the incarnation, the atonement, and the res- urrection. Thelife in general served mainly to con- nect and lead up tothese great events, andtofound theChurch. 1 The things inwhich Jesus himselfwas passionately interested andwhich hestroveto accomplish, donotseemto count for much.The impartation of di- vinelifeand immortality to the race was accomplished when he was ababe.The atonement mightactually havebeen frustratedif the life effort of Jesus hadbeen 1 Thetreatment ofhis " work " underthe threeheads of prophet, priest, and king, which is an hereditary schemein theology, seems antique and far-fetched. Moreover, his kingly office mainly begins with his resurrection. His kingly workin historical lifehas been treated with neglect.

• From 50 Shades Uncovered (2015)

  (Projector Sound) I got this phone call from the publisher and they told me they'd picked up this-- this book. It was erotic. They used the phrase BDSM, which I'd never heard. BDSM, everyone calls it now. BDSM always to me sounds like a driving school. (car horn honks) White: They used the phrase "mummy porn." They told me it was gonna sell a million copies and my naturally skeptical mind immediately (laughs) suggested that that was, that was a ridiculous thing. Erotic fiction didn't sell. ♪ You've got me tied up ♪ Handcuffed... Narrator: "Fifty Shades of Grey" is not just a book. It's a global sensation. The bestselling adult novel of all time has had a major impact on the publishing world and in quite a few bedrooms. Now I would like my other half to buy me a flogger, but I don't think that's gonna happen. (laughing hysterically) We haven't seen anything like this since the "Sex and the City" rabbit vibrator craze. (woman moans) Narrator: The series traces the tale of domination as seen through the eyes of the innocent Anastasia Steele, who embarks on an unconventional relationship with Christian Grey, a mysterious, bondage-loving billionaire. The real reason why people loved it was the romantic relationship between the characters. He's handsome and wealthy, and we'd all like that in life. He is a prince, he is a god descended from heaven. Can you imagine asking Christian Grey to put the bins out? No. Nor can I. If he wasn't a rich billionaire, then Anastasia's character would probably be calling the police on him. Narrator: International sales of the sizzling trilogy have reached over one hundred million copies, surpassing "The Da Vinci Code" as well as the entire "Harry Potter" series. E.L. James has been named one of the "Time" magazine's hundred most influential people in the world. - Wow. Up there with Mother Teresa. - Yep. E.L. James classifies her novels as "romance." They are porn. Narrator: Whether you love it or hate it, "Fifty Shades" is here to stay. ♪ You've got me tied up ♪ Handcuffed. (cheering) Narrator: The most successful book in history originated with the most modest of beginnings, as a fan's online homage to the "Twilight" vampire series. Hopkins: The book was based on a fan fiction based around "Twilight." It's like the "Twilight" saga, but naughty. "Twilight" is the watered-down PG version. - Yeah. - Yeah. I also dislike "Twilight." (cheering) "Fifty Shades" started as an online phenomenon. What's interesting is that she was able to publish this without a publisher at first. It started off as a fan faction. It's just like blogging or tweeting. It's-- it's how writers can get their writing out there to an audience without any boundaries. You've got websites like Wattpad and the writers, they rack up millions and millions of views.

• From 50 Shades Uncovered (2015)

  Narrator: "Lady Chatterley" became a bestseller and opened the floodgates for freely available mass-consumed erotica. White: All the controversy around the court case generated enormous sales. I think it was the thing which, um, made Penguin money for the first time, but pales into insignificance compared to the enormous interest that was generated by "Fifty Shades of Grey." There's never been anything else like it. (music playing) ♪ Work that body ♪ Work it, work it ♪ Work that body... Narrator: With roots in erotica and chick lit, "Fifty Shades" arguably owes as much to "Bridget Jones" as "Twilight" and follows a long tradition of novels that have played with the idea of what the contemporary romance novel can be. ♪ Work it... "Fifty Shades of Grey" is Mills and Boon for the new era. ♪ I'm gonna make that body work all night... ♪ Kite: When "Fifty Shades" came around, people thought "Oh, wow," you know, "This is a really explicit book." But actually that's what Mills and Boon has been doing for a while. It was around the 1980s when a condom was first mentioned. That was a really big thing. (buzzing sound) There are elements which are similar, which is, you know, the woman surrendering to the man. But I skip all that, you know, everyone's just looking for the next dirty bit, aren't they? ♪ Let that body work ♪ Work me, work it... Narrator: "Fifty Shades" and its sequels have sparked endless debate about why the world of BDSM might appeal to the modern liberated woman. ♪ Work it, work it... If I ask you a question, you can answer it in two words, "Yes, Mistress," or "No, Mistress." Is that clear? ♪ Work it, work it... Hodson: What E.L. James has done is to write a book that works to help people take this into the mainstream. ♪ Yeah, hey... Hopkins: I think loads of women out there didn't realize that this whole dom-- dominant and submissive kind of culture existed. ♪ I'm gonna work that body, work all night ♪ ♪ I'm gonna make that body work... ♪ There are plenty of sexual preferences outside of man on top. I think they probably used to see women walking men down the street with a chain around their neck and just think, "Oh, that's nice. She's taking him for a walk. Isn't that sweet?" Eclair: There's a lot of "Fifty Shades of Grey" sexually that I really, really disapprove of. You know, I've lived with the same man for 30 years and I've never done anything he's wanted me to do, not even by accident. ♪ You to work it, work that body... ♪ Francis: We've been indoctrinated about what's right in sex and society, you know, women reading books about princesses from a really young age. And so our first reaction is, "You can't do sex like that." ♪ Work it, work it... Gaukroger: It became so popular so quickly.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  Then softly disengaging herself she led me out of the room and closed the door behind us. I must tell you about Nessim’ she said in a low voice. ‘Listen to me. On Wednesday, the day before we left the Summer Palace, I went for a ride alone by the sea. There was a big flight of herring-gulls over the shoreline and all of a sudden I saw the car in the distance rolling and scrambling down the dunes towards the sea with Selim at the wheel. I couldn’t make out what they were doing. Nessim was in the back. I thought she would surely get stuck, but no: they raced down to the water’s edge where the sand was firm and began to speed along the shore towards me. I was not on the beach but in a hollow about fifty yards from the sea. As they came racing level with me and the gulls rose I saw that Nessim had the old repeating-gun in his hands. He raised it and fired again and again into the cloud of gulls, until the magazine was exhausted. Three or four fell fluttering into the sea, but the car did not stop. They were past me in a flash. There must have been a way back from the long beach to the sandstone and so back on to the main road because when I rode in half an hour later the car was back. Nessim was in his observatory. The door was locked and he said he was busy. I asked Selim the meaning of this scene and he simply shrugged his shoulders and pointed at Nessim’s door. “He gave me the orders” was all he said. But, my dear, if you had seen Nessim’s face as he raised the gun.…’ And thinking of it she involuntarily raised her long fingers to her own cheeks as if to adjust the expression on her own face. ‘He looked mad.’ In the other room they were talking politely of world politics and the situation in Germany. Nessim had perched himself gracefully on Pordre’s chair. Pombal was swallowing yawns which kept returning distressingly enough in the form of belches. My mind was still full of Melissa. I had sent her some money that afternoon and the thought of her buying herself some fine clothes — or even spending it in some foolish way — warmed me. ‘Money’ Pombal was saying playfully to an elderly woman who had the appearance of a contrite camel. ‘One should always make sure of a supply. For only with money can one make more money. Madame certainly knows the Arabic proverb which says: “Riches can buy riches, but poverty will scarcely buy one a leper’s kiss.”’ ‘We must go’ said Justine, and staring into her warm dark eyes as I said good-bye I knew that she divined how full of Melissa my mind was at the moment; it gave her handshake an added warmth and sympathy.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  In the corner of the tent there was a square of sunlight, where the canvas had been tied back to form a doorway - it was so bright I had to narrow my eyes to look at it, and blink. At one edge of the square of light stood a woman, her face concealed, as the girl had said, by a broad hat and a width of net. As I studied her, she lifted her arms to her veil, and raised it. And then I saw her face.‘Why don’t you go to her?’ I heard Florence say coldly. ‘I daresay she has come to ask you back to St John’s Wood. You shall never have to think of socialism again, there ...’I turned to her; and when she saw how pale my cheeks were, her expression changed.‘It’s not Diana,’ I whispered. ‘Oh, Flo! It’s not Diana -’It was Kitty.I stood for a moment quite dumbfounded. I had seen two old lovers already today; and here was the third of them - or, rather, the first of them: my original love; my one true love - my real love, my best love - the love who had so broken my heart, it seemed never to have fired quite properly again ...I went to her, without another glance at Florence, and stood before her and rubbed my eyes against the sun — so that, when I looked at her again, she seemed surrounded by a thousand dancing points of light.‘Nan,’ she said, and she smiled, rather nervously. ‘You have not forgotten me, I hope?’ Her voice shook a little, as it had used to do, sometimes, in passion. Her accent was rather purer, with slightly less colour to it, than I remembered.‘Forgotten you?’ I said then, finding my own voice at last. ‘No. I’m only so very surprised, to see you.’ I gazed at her, and swallowed. Her eyes were as brown as ever, her lashes as dark, her lip as pink ... But she had changed, I had seen it at once. There were one or two creases beside her mouth and at her brow, that told of the years that had passed since we were sweethearts; and she had let her hair grow, so that it curved above her ears in a great, glossy pompadour. With the creases and the hair she did not look, any more, like the prettiest of boys: she looked, as the girl she had sent to me had said, like a lady.As I studied her, so she gazed at me. At last she said, ‘You seem very different, to when I saw you last ...’I shrugged. ‘Of course. I was nineteen then. I’m twenty-five, now.’‘Twenty-five in two weeks’ time,’ she answered; and her lip trembled a little. ‘I remembered that, you see.’I felt myself blush, and could not answer her.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  At the end, against the light, I catch sight of another punt moving towards us which gradually defines itself into the familiar figure of Nessim. He is wearing his old moleskin cap with the earflaps up and tied over the top. I wave but he does not respond. He sits abstractedly in the prow of the punt with his hands clasped about his knees. ‘Nessim’ I shout. ‘How did you do? I got eight brace and one lost.’ The boats are nearly abreast now, for we are heading towards the mouth of the last canal which leads to the lodge. Nessim waits until we are within a few yards of each other before he says with a curious serenity, ‘Did you hear? There’s been an accident. Capodistria …’ and all of a sudden my heart contracts in my body. ‘Capodistria?’ I stammer. Nessim still has the curious impish serenity of someone resting after a great expenditure of energy. ‘He’s dead’ he says, and I hear the sudden roar of the hydroplane engines starting up behind the wall of reeds. He nods towards the sound and adds in the same still voice: ‘They are taking him back to Alexandria.’ A thousand conventional commonplaces, a thousand conventional questions spring to my mind, but for a long time I can say nothing. On the balcony the others have assembled uneasily, almost shamefacedly; they are like a group of thoughtless schoolboys for whom some silly prank has ended in the death of one of their fellows. The furry cone of noise from the hydroplane still coats the air. In the middle distance one can hear shouts and the noise of car-engines starting up. The piled bodies of the duck, which would normally be subject matter for gloating commentaries, lie about the lodge with anachronistic absurdity. It appears that death is a relative question. We had only been prepared to accept a certain share of it when we entered the dark lake with our weapons. The death of Capodistria hangs in the still air like a bad smell, like a bad joke. Ralli had been sent to get him and had found the body lying face down in the shallow waters of the lake with the black eye-patch floating near him. It was clearly an accident. Capodistria’s loader was an elderly man, thin as a cormorant, who sits now hunched over a mess of beans on the balcony. He cannot give a coherent account of the business. He is from Upper Egypt and has the weary half-crazed expression of a desert father.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  OF COURSE I considered quitting graduate school. I paid my ticket, I rode the ride. Right? Half the people I started with quit. I did not have to continue toward scholar. But something wouldn’t let me. Some deep wrestling match going on inside my rib house and gray matter. Some woman in me I’d never met. You know who she was? My intellect. When I opened the door and there she stood, with her sassy red reading glasses and fitted skirt and leather bookbag, I thought, who the hell are you? Crouching into a defensive posture and looking at her warily out of the corner of my eye. Watch out, woman. To which she replied, I’m Lidia. I have a desire toward language and knowledge that will blow your mind. And I’m here to write a dissertation. Yeah. Right. Whatever. And anyway, where did you even come from? Oh, I think you know. I’m from your father. Now open the goddamned door. My father. Whose mind curled around art and architecture and classical music and film. Whose intellect I carried in my blood rivers. That’s when my two mes had it out. The me I’d forged to leave a family and body batter my way into the world, and the me I’d never met, or even knew existed, except perhaps hidden in my hands, hiding like the crouch of dreams in my fingers. My father’s daughter. “I am a woman who talks to herself and lies.” The night after I jumped from the train of things, at the computer my heart raced. My first book came out of me in a great gushing return of the repressed. Like a blood clot had loosened. My hands frenzied. Words from my whole body, my entire life, or the lives of women and girls whose stories got stuck in their throats came gushing out. Nothing could have stopped the stories coming out of me. Even though my hands and arms and face hurt - bruised and cut from falling from a train - or a marriage - or a self in the night - I wrote story after story. There was no inside out. There were words and there was my body, and I could see through my own skin. I wrote my guts out. Until it was a book. Until my very skin made screamsong. Short Story SO MY FIRST BOOK OF STORIES BEAT MY DISSERTATION to print. I got published by an independent press. One that did not care about how far I’d paddled outside the mainstream. I called the book Her Other Mouths. In every story, intense things happen to a body. Because, well, they do. Did. And I knew how to tell it. Words the body of me.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She was a large woman, and she had her sleeves rolled up to her elbows. On her arm there was a rough tattoo, so green and smudged it might have been a bruise. She reached our booth, placed the tattooed arm across the back of it, and leaned to catch my eye.‘Excuse me, sweetheart,’ she said, rather loudly. ‘But my pal Jenny will have it that you’re that Nan King gal, what used to work the halls with Kitty Butler. I’ve a shilling on it that you ain’t her. Now, will you settle it?’I looked quickly around the table. Florence and Annie had looked up in mild surprise. Nora had broken off her story and now smiled and said, ‘I should make the most of this Nance. There might be a free drink in it.’ Miss Raymond laughed. No one believed that I really might be Nan King; and I, of course, had spent five years in hiding from that history, denying I had ever been her, myself.But the rum, the warmth, my new, unspoken passion seemed to work in me like oil in a rusted lock. I turned back to the woman. ‘I’m afraid,’ I said, ‘that you must lose your bet. I am Nan King.’ It was the truth, and yet I felt like an impostor - as if I had just said, ‘I am Lord Rosebery’. I did not look at Florence — though out of the corner of my eye I saw her mouth fly open. I looked at the tattooed woman, and gave her a modest little shrug. She, for her part, had stepped back; now she slapped our stall until it shook, and called, laughing, to her friend.‘Jenny, you have won your coin! The gal says she is Nan King, all right!’At her words the group at the billiard-table let up a cry, and half the room fell silent. The gay girls in the neighbouring stall got up, to peer over at me; I heard ‘Nan King, it is Nan King there!’ whispered at every table. The tattooed tom’s friend - Jenny - came stepping over, and held her hand out to me.‘Miss King,’ she said, ‘I knew it was you the moment you come in. What happy times I used to have, watching you and Miss Butler at the Paragon!’‘You’re very kind,’ I said, taking her hand. As I did so, I caught Florence’s eye.‘Nance,’ she asked, ‘what is all this? Did you really work the halls? Why did you never say?’‘It was all rather long ago ...’ She shook her head, and looked me over.‘You don’t mean you didn’t know your friend was such a star?’ asked Jenny now, overhearing.‘We didn’t know that she was any kind of star,’ said Annie.‘Her and Kitty Butler - what a team!

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  We went, I remember, to a café on the sea-front and sat despondently before a black coffee while he croaked on about this historic watch. It was during this conversation that he said: ‘I think you know Justine. She has spoken to me warmly of you. She will bring you to the Cabal.’ ‘What is that?’ I asked. ‘We study the Cabbala’ he said almost shyly; ‘we are a sort of small lodge. She said you knew something about it and would be interested.’ This astonished me for I had never, as far as I knew, mentioned to Justine any line of study which I was pursuing — in between long bouts of lethargy and self-disgust. And as far as I knew the little suitcase containing the Hermetica and other books of the kind had always been kept under my bed locked. I said nothing however. He spoke now of Nessim, saying: ‘Of all of us he is the most happy in a way because he has no preconceived idea of what he wants in return for his love. And to love in such an unpremeditated way is something that most people have to re-learn after fifty. Children have it. So has he. I am serious.’ ‘Did you know the writer Arnauti?’ ‘Yes. The author of Moeurs.’ ‘Tell me about him.’ ‘He intruded on us, but he did not see the spiritual city underlying the temporal one. Gifted, sensitive, but very French. He found Justine too young to be more than hurt by her. It was ill luck. Had he found another a little older — all our women are Justines, you know, in different styles — he might have — I will not say written better, for his book is well written: but he might have found in it a sort of resolution which would have made it more truly a work of art.’ He paused and took a long pull at his pipe before adding slowly: ‘You see in his book he avoided dealing with a number of things which he knew to be true of Justine, but which he ignored for purely artistic purposes — like the incident of her child. I suppose he thought it smacked of melodrama.’ ‘What child was this?’ ‘Justine had a child, by whom I do not know. It was kidnapped and disappeared one day. About six years old. A girl. These things do happen quite frequently in Egypt as you know. Later she heard that it had been seen or recognized and began a frantic hunt for it through the Arab quarter of every town, through every house of ill-fame, since you know what happens to parentless children in Egypt. Arnauti never mentioned this, though he often helped her follow up clues, and he must have seen how much this loss contributed to her unhappiness.’ ‘Who did Justine love before Arnauti?’

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  Pursewarden could afford to be convivial and about twice a week I was kept up by the noise of drinking and laughter from the flat. One night quite late there came a knock at the door. In the corridor stood Pursewarden, looking pale and rather perky — as if he had just been fired out of a gun into a net. Beside him stood a stout naval stoker of unprepossessing ugliness — looking like all naval stokers; as if he had been sold into slavery as a child. ‘I say’ said Pursewarden shrilly, Tombal told me you were a doctor; would you come and take a look at somebody who is ill?’ I had once told Georges of the year I spent as a medical student with the result that for him I had become a fully-fledged doctor. He not only confided all his own indispositions to my care — which included frequent infestations of body-crabs — but he once went so far as to try and persuade me to perform an abortion for him on the dining-room table. I hastened to tell Pursewarden that I was certainly not a doctor, and advised him to telephone for one: but the phone was out of order, and the boab could not be roused from his sleep: so more in the spirit of disinterested curiosity than anything I put on a mackintosh over my pyjamas and made my way along the corridor. This was how we met! Opening the door I was immediately blinded by the glare and smoke. The party did not seem to be of the usual kind, for the guests consisted of three or four maimed-looking naval cadets, and a prostitute from Golfo’s tavern, smelling of briny paws and taphia.* Improbably enough, too, she was bending over a figure seated on the end of a couch — the figure which I now recognize as Melissa, but which then seemed like a catastrophic Greek comic mask. Melissa appeared to be raving, but soundlessly for her voice had gone — so that she looked like a film of herself without a sound-track. Her features were a cave. The older woman appeared to be panic-sticken, and was boxing her ears and pulling her hair; while one of the naval cadets was splashing water rather inexpertly upon her from a heavily decorated chamber-pot which was one of Pombal’s dearest treasures and which bore the royal arms of France on its underside. Somewhere out of sight someone was being slowly, unctuously sick. Pursewarden stood beside me surveying the scene, looking rather ashamed of himself.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She gazed past me, into the tent. ‘You can imagine my surprise,’ she said then, ‘when I looked in there just now, and saw you lecturing from the stage. I never thought you’d end up on a platform in a tent, speaking on workers’ rights!’‘Neither did I,’ I said. Then I smiled, and so did she. ‘Why are you here, at all?’ I asked her then.‘I’m in rooms at Bow. Everyone has been saying all week, that I must come to the park on Sunday, since there was to be such a marvellous thing in it.’‘Have they?’‘Oh, yes!’‘And - are you here quite alone, then?’She glanced quickly away. ‘Yes. Walter’s in Liverpool just now. He has gone back to managing: he has shares in a hall up there, and has rented a house for us. I’m to join him when the house is ready.’‘And you’re still working the halls?’‘Not so much. We ... we had an act together -’‘I know,’ I said. ‘I saw you. At the Middlesex.’Her eyes widened. ‘The time that you met Billy-Boy? Oh, Nan, if I had only known that you were watching! When Bill came back and said he’d seen you -’‘I couldn’t look at you for long,’ I said.‘Were we so bad as that, then?’ She smiled, but I shook my head: ‘It wasn’t that ...’ Her smile grew fainter.I said, after a moment: ‘So you don’t work so much? How’s that?’‘Well, Walter is kept busy with the managing now. And then - well, we kept it quiet, but I was rather ill.’ She hesitated. ‘I was to have a child ...’The thought was horrible to me, in every way. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.She shrugged. ‘Walter was disappointed. We have quite forgotten it now, however. It only means that I am not quite so strong as I once was ...’We fell silent. I looked for a second into the crowd, then back at Kitty. She had coloured. Now she said: ‘Nan, Bill told me, when he met you that time, that you were dressed - well, as a boy.’‘That’s right. I was. Quite as a boy.’ She laughed and frowned at once, not understanding.‘He said, too, that you were living with a - with a -’‘With a lady. I was.’She blushed still harder. ‘And - are you with her still?’‘No, I - I live with a girl now, in Bethnal Green.’‘Oh!’I hesitated - but then I did what I had done with Zena, two hours before. I moved slightly into the shadow of the tent, and Kitty followed. ‘That’s her over there,’ I said, nodding towards the seats before the platform. ‘The girl with the little boy.’Annie and Miss Raymond had moved away, and Florence sat alone now. As I gestured to her she looked over at me, then gazed gravely at Kitty.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  This further warning was given point for me by an incident which occurred very shortly afterwards when, in search of a sheet of notepaper on which to write to Melissa, I strayed into Nessim’s little observatory and rummaged about on his desk for what I needed. I happened to notice that the telescope barrel had been canted downwards so that it no longer pointed at the sky but across the dunes towards where the city slumbered in its misty reaches of pearl cloud. This was not unusual, for trying to catch glimpses of the highest minarets as the airs condensed and shifted was a favourite pastime. I sat on the three-legged stool and placed my eye to the eye-piece, to allow the faintly trembling and vibrating image of the landscape to assemble for me. Despite the firm stone base on which the tripod stood the high magnification of the lens and the heat haze between them contributed a feathery vibration to the image which gave the landscape the appearance of breathing softly and irregularly. I was astonished to see — quivering and jumping, yet pin-point clear — the little reed hut where not an hour since Justine and I had been lying in each other’s arms, talking of Pursewarden. A brilliant yellow patch on the dune showed up the cover of a pocket King Lear which I had taken out with me and forgotten to bring back; had the image not trembled so I do not doubt but that I should have been able to read the title on the cover. I stared at this image breathlessly for a long moment and became afraid. It was as if, all of a sudden, in a dark but familiar room one believed was empty a hand had suddenly reached out and placed itself on one’s shoulder. I tip-toed from the observatory with the writing pad and pencil and sat in the arm-chair looking out at the sea, wondering what I could say to Melissa. * * * * *

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I did not think it was loud enough. ‘How old?’ I cried - for all the world as if I were a pantomime dame, and Ralph my cross-chat partner - and he called the figure out again, louder than before: ‘Twenty-nine!’‘Nine-and-twenty’ I said to the audience. ‘What if I were a lady, Mr Banner? What if I lived in Hampstead or - or St John’s Wood; lived very comfortably, on my shares in Bryant and May? What is the average age of death amongst such ladies?’‘It is fifty-five,’ he said at once. ‘Fifty-five! Almost twice as long.’ He had remembered the speech and now, at my silent urging, kept on with it, in a voice that was soon almost as strong as my own. ‘Because for every one person that dies in the smart parts of the city, four will die in the East End. They will die, many of ’em, of diseases which their smart neighbours know perfectly well how to treat or prevent. Or they will be killed by machines, in their workshops. Or perhaps they will simply die of hunger. Indeed, one or two people will die in London this very night, of pure starvation ...‘And all this, after two hundred years in which - as all the economists will tell you - Great Britain’s wealth has increased twenty times over! All this in the richest city on earth!’There were some shouts at that, but I waited for them to die before taking up the speech where he had left it; and when I did speak at last, I did it quietly, so that people had to lean, and frown, to hear me. ‘Why is this so?’ I said. ‘Is it because working people are spendthrifts? Because we would rather use our money to buy gin and porter, and trips to the music hall, and tobacco, and on betting, than on meat for our children and bread for ourselves? You will see all these things written, and hear them said, by rich men. Does that make them true? Truth is a queer thing, when it comes to rich men talking about the poor. Only think: if we broke into a rich man’s house, he would call us thieves, and send us to prison. If we set a foot on his estate, we would be trespassers - he would set his dogs upon us! If we took some of his gold, we would be pickpockets; if we made him pay us money to get the gold back, we would be swindlers and con-men!‘But what is the rich man’s wealth but robbery, called by another title? The rich man steals from his competitors; he steals the land, and puts a wall about it; he steals our health, our liberty; he steals the fruits of our labour, and obliges us to buy them back from him!

• From Wild (2012)

  “And here I am,” I stammered, taken aback by his enthusiasm and good looks. “We’re all camped over there.” I gestured behind me. “There’s a bunch of us. Where’s your friend?” “He’ll be coming up soon,” Doug said, and hooted again, apropos of nothing. He reminded me of all the golden boys I’d known in my life—classically handsome and charmingly sure of his place at the very top of the heap, confident that the world was his and that he was safe in it, without ever having considered otherwise. As I stood next to him, I had the feeling that any moment he’d reach for my hand and together we’d parachute off a cliff, laughing as we wafted gently down. “Tom!” Doug bellowed when he saw a figure appear down the road. Together we walked toward him. I could tell even from a distance that Tom was Doug’s physical and spiritual opposite—bony, pale, bespectacled. The smile that crept onto his face as we approached was cautious and mildly unconvinced. “Hello,” he said to me when we got close enough, reaching to shake my hand. In the few short minutes it took for us to reach Ed’s camp, we exchanged a flurry of information about who we were and where we were from. Tom was twenty-four; Doug, twenty-one. New England blue bloods, my mother would have called them, I knew almost before they told me a thing—which meant to her only that they were basically rich and from somewhere east of Ohio and north of D.C. Over the course of the coming days, I’d learn all about them. How their parents were surgeons and mayors and financial executives. How they’d both attended a tony boarding school whose fame was so great even I knew it by name. How they’d vacationed on Nantucket and on private islands off the coast of Maine and spent their spring breaks in Vail. But I didn’t know any of that yet, how in so many ways their lives were unfathomable to me and mine to them. I knew only that in some very particular ways they were my closest kin. They weren’t gearheads or backpacking experts or PCT know-it-alls. They hadn’t hiked all the way from Mexico, nor had they been planning the trip for a decade. And even better, the miles they’d traversed so far had left them nearly as shattered as they’d left me. They hadn’t, by virtue of their togetherness, gone days without seeing another human being. Their packs looked of a size reasonable enough that I doubted they were carrying a foldable saw. But I could tell the instant I locked eyes with Doug that, despite all his confidence and ease, he had been through something. And when Tom took my hand to shake it, I could read precisely the expression on his face. It said: I’VE GOT TO GET THESE FUCKING BOOTS OFF MY FEET.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I was not impatient now. I did not need to be impatient. I merely sat and thought of her warm, slumbering body that I would soon embrace; I imagined her pleasure, her surprise, her rising love, at seeing me returned so soon.Our house, when I gazed up at it from the street, was, as I had hoped, quite dark and shuttered. I walked on tip-toe up the steps, and eased my key into the lock. The passageway was quiet: even our landlady and her husband seemed still abed. I laid down my bags, and took off my coat. There was a cloak already hanging from the hat-stand, and I squinted at it: it was Walter’s. How queer, I thought, he must have come here yesterday, and forgotten it! - and soon, creeping up the darkened staircase, I forgot it myself.I reached Kitty’s door, and put my ear to it. I had expected silence, but there was a sound from beyond it - a kind of lapping sound, as of a kitten at a saucer of milk. I thought, Damn! She must be awake already and taking her tea; then I caught the creak of the bedstead, and was sure of it. Disappointed, but gay with the expectation of seeing her, I caught hold of the door-handle and entered the room.She was indeed awake. She sat in bed, propped up against a pillow, with the blankets raised as far as her armpits and her naked arms upon the counterpane. There was a lamp lit, and turned high; the room was not at all dark. At a little wash-hand stand at the foot of the bed there was another figure. Walter. He was jacketless, and collarless; his shirt was tucked roughly into his trousers, but his braces dangled, almost to his knees. He was bending over the bowl of water, bathing his face - that had been the lapping sound that I had heard. His whiskers were dark and gleaming where he had wet them.It was his eye that I caught first. He gazed at me in sheer surprise, his hands lifted, the water running from them into his sleeves; then his face gave a kind of twitch, horrible to behold - and at the same time, from the corner of my eye, I saw Kitty twitch, too, beneath the bedclothes.Even then, I think, I didn’t quite understand.‘What’s this?’ I said, and laughed a little, nervously. I looked at Kitty, waiting for her to join in my laughter - to say, ‘Oh, Nan! How funny this must look to you! It isn’t how it seems, at all.’But she did not even smile.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  I asked, and Lara surprised me with the answer: “Can we play Red Riding Hood together?” I was stunned by the coincidence. How did she know that this was the fairy tale I had chosen for my research and that I had gotten the approval to start only the week before? The more experience I have with patients, the more I learn how unconsciously connected we are to the people around us. With Lara, it was the first time I’d experienced that, but it wouldn’t be the last. Since then I have had many uncanny coincidences with my patients. Through our dreams, reveries, and synchronicities we realize that we know more about one another than we are aware of. Lara smiled. “You are the daughter and I am the mother,” she said. I opened the closet. There were the new puppets I had just gotten: a girl with a red dress, a mother, a grandmother, and a wolf. “What about the grandmother and the wolf?” I asked. “Who plays them?” Lara paused. “We don’t need a wolf,” she said. “There are no wolves in our story.” A few weeks before my first session with Lara, I had met with her parents, Hanna and Jed. When working with children I always meet first with the parents, to gather information about the child and the family and to discuss the goals and process of therapy. Although the child is the one in therapy, very often it is the parents who need the most help. Children frequently express the reality of the family and become what we call the “identified patient,” which means the one who seems like the “sick” member of the family. Those children usually carry and express the problems of the whole family as a unit. Most families have one member who is unconsciously assigned to carry the symptoms, that is, the family member on whom the family projects the pathology. That person, often one of the children, will be the one sent to therapy. When treating families as a system, we explore the role of the child as the symptom carrier for the family. Lara was the “identified patient” in her family. She was in second grade and would wake up in the mornings nauseous, holding her stomach and crying that she didn’t want to go to school. Her parents believed she suffered from social anxiety. After meeting with Lara, I understood her anxiety a little differently, realizing that she was worried about her mother, and therefore it was hard for her to separate from her.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Just as surely, however, evolution has also designed you to benefit from sharing micro-moments of love with even the most distant and dissimilar other. Don’t miss out on your chance to give love . . . and health . . . and oneness . . . freely, to all. CHAPTER 9 A Closing Loving Glance I NEVER KNEW HOW TO WORSHIP UNTIL I KNEW HOW TO LOVE. —Henry Ward Beecher After spending months building the case for this book for why it’s worth upgrading your view of love, I’ve become convinced that this simple call opens the door to an endless process. The work of science, after all, is never done. Even though the latest discoveries about love’s impact on your body, brain, behavior, and future prospects can fill volumes and fill you with amazement, it’s equally humbling to recognize how little we actually know about love’s full impact. New discoveries about love’s power will continue to unfold. As they do, you and I alike will be called to upgrade our views of love, time and again, to reimagine this life-stretching experience from the ground up once more. Whatever your prior beliefs about love, my hope is that I’ve piqued your curiosity to begin to see love as your body experiences it, as positivity resonance that can momentarily reverberate between you and virtually anyone else. Before these reverberations fade, they initiate biochemical cascades that help remake who you are, both in body and in mind. It’s also worth considering whether you’ve unwittingly placed constraints on your own experiences of love by following cultural norms. These constraints may have been holding you back from reaching your full potential for health and happiness, and from making deeper contributions to the lives of others. Beyond sharing the latest science on love, my aim in this book has been to release you from these constraints. The task of upgrading love remains incomplete without self-reflection and self-change. Years ago, when I sat in a silent meditation retreat sponsored by the Mind and Life Institute held at the retreat center cofounded by my friend and collaborator Sharon Salzberg, one of our teachers shared a joke with us. It went something like this: On learning of a friend’s new (or renewed) devotion to meditation practice, an observer quipped, “Practice, practice, practice! All you ever do is practice! When’s the performance?” After a muted wave of chuckles rolled through the meditation hall, our teacher went on to say that there is indeed a performance scheduled; it’s called “Your Daily Life.” This is the mind-set about the practices in part II that I urge you to adopt. Whether you choose to shift your focus with formal meditation or with the informal micro-moment practices I’ve offered, I can guarantee you that merely dabbling in them one or two times will lead to no appreciable changes.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  Heaving his bulk round he next produced from his pocket a battered little yellow-covered novelette and placed it on my knees. ‘Here is something to interest you. Justine was married when she was very young to a French national, Albanian by descent, a writer. This little book is about her — a post-mortem on her; it is quite decently done.’ I turned the novel over in my hands. It was entitled Moeurs and it was by a certain Jacob Arnauti. The flyleaf showed it to have enjoyed numerous reprintings in the early thirties. ‘How do you know this?’ I asked, and Georges winked a large, heavy-lidded reptilian eye as he replied. ‘We have been making enquiries. The Consul can think of nothing but Justine, and the whole staff has been busy for weeks collecting information about her. Vive la France!’ When he had gone I started turning the pages of Moeurs, still half-dazed by sleep. It was very well written indeed, in the first person singular, and was a diary of Alexandrian life as seen by a foreigner in the early thirties. The author of the diary is engaged on research for a novel he proposes to do — and the day to day account of his life in Alexandria is accurate and penetrating; but what arrested me was the portrait of a young Jewess he meets and marries: takes to Europe: divorces. The foundering of this marriage on their return to Egypt is done with a savage insight that throws into relief the character of Claudia, his wife. And what astonished and interested me was to see in her a sketch of Justine I recognized without knowing: a younger, a more disoriented Justine, to be sure. But unmistakable. Indeed whenever I read the book, and this was often, I was in the habit of restoring her name to the text. It fitted with an appalling verisimilitude.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She gazed at me with fearful eyes, and pulled the blankets higher, as if to hide her nakedness from me. From me!It was Walter who spoke.‘Nan,’ he said hesitantly - I had never heard his voice so dry and bare - ‘Nan, you have surprised us. We didn’t look for you until tonight.’ He took up a towel and rubbed at his face with it. Then he stepped very quickly to the chair, seized his jacket and pulled it on. His hands, I saw, were shaking.I had never seen him shake before.I said, ‘I caught an earlier train ...’ My mouth, like his, had dried; my voice, in consequence, sounded slow and thick. ‘Indeed, I thought it was still very early. How long, Walter, have you been here?’He shook his head, as if the question pained him, and took a step towards me. Then he said rather urgently: ‘Nan, forgive me. This is not for your eyes. Will you come downstairs with me and let us talk ... ?’His tone was strange; and hearing it, I knew for certain.‘No!’ I folded my hands over my belly: there was a hot, sour churning in there, as if they had fed me poison. At my cry Kitty shivered and grew white. I turned to her. ‘It isn’t true!’ I said. ‘Oh tell me, tell me - say it ain’t true!’ She wouldn’t look at me, only placed her hands before her eyes and began to weep.Walter came closer and put his hand upon my arm.‘Get away!’ I cried, and stepped free of him towards the bed. ‘Kitty? Kitty?’ I knelt beside her, took her hand from her face, and held it to my own lips. I kissed her fingers, her nails, her palm, her wrist; her knuckles, that were damp from her own weeping, were soon drenched with tears and slobber. Walter looked on, appalled, still trembling.At last, she met my gaze. ‘It’s true,’ she whispered.I gave a start, and a moan - then heard her shriek, felt Walter’s fingers grip my shoulders, and realised that I had bitten her, like a dog. She pulled her hand away and gazed at me in horror. Again I shook Walter off, then turned to scream at him. ‘Get away, get out! Get out, and leave us!’