Tenderness

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 47 of 145 · 20 per page

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  she leaves.” She pushes her head back against my hand to acknowledge my affection. Throughout the years, we’ve sharpened our nonverbal communications in this way, exchanging affection and understanding with the same evolved understanding as some of the wild lion cubs we watch on Wild Kingdom. The less we speak, the less likely it is that we’ll throw our mother into a rage without knowing why. Camille and I set out to scrub the first floor of the house, where we’ll be spending most of our time . . . but more important, it’s where our mother’s resting now. The sooner we get cleaning around her the sooner she’s sure to leave. I attack the kitchen around the corner from Cookie’s bedroom while Camille begins in the living room. “Psssst,” my sister hisses from the other side of the house. I stretch my neck out of the kitchen to meet her gaze. “You’ll help me with her room?” I nod and mouth to her: After she leaves. A white Formica table sits between three cabineted walls and a block of windows that overlooks the dusty backyard enclosed by a chain-linked fence. When I move the scummy dishes, bowls, and pots that the previous tenant left in the sink, I’m met by rivals to our survival. “WHAT’S WRONG?” CAMILLE yells when the dishes clatter. Rosie’s head turns toward the kitchen. “Nothing. Camille, can you come help me load the fridge?” Camille will understand this code for the cockroach solution we learned long ago: If there’s a working fridge with a door that shuts, every bit of our food goes inside it, whether or not it needs refrigeration. I’m used to ants, mice, and maggots, who, as creepy as they are, will scatter in fear when they sense my presence. But cockroaches! It’s not even their spiny legs and long antennae that gross me out; it’s the way they work in packs and maneuver in the dark, attacking our food like looters. I join the others in the living room just as Cookie’s emerging from her bedroom, wearing a pair of Jordache jeans, Dr. Scholl’s sandals, and a man’s Hanes tank top. Rather than bathing, Cookie tries to mask her cigarette and alcohol stink with a cheap, toxic mixture of Jontue and Jean Naté. As her figure casts a shadow over the room, I quickly work out the cost implications of her ensemble: One pair of Jordache jeans equals one week of oil for hot water; Dr. Scholl’s equals eight loaves of bread, four boxes of spaghetti, three bags of wheat puffs, and two

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

  High mortality and a vigorous slave system ensured that the “Big House” style of habitation fl ourished. Domes- tic slaves, considered little more than breathing furniture, were often spec- tators in the conjugal bedroom; we hear of a rabbi who would ring a little bell when he was about to have sex with his wife, but he was a prude. With in- laws and parents, slaves and freedmen, nurses and children sharing a domestic space, the Romans had little notion of what we would consider privacy. But it is meaningful that the physical house in the Roman Empire was not a castle of the transgenerational gens; as time, circumstance, and resources allowed, the married couple sought residential in de pen dence for their domestic enterprise. Urbanization only encouraged young couples to set up their own stead. Material factors thus reinforced the model of aff ec- tive, companionate marriage.  It may seem paradoxical, but the legal advantages enjoyed by Roman wives— progressive by primitive standards— conduced to promote the af- fective nuclear family. In the Roman Empire, a husband took his wife sine manu, meaning that she remained in the legal power of her father, so long as he was alive, rather than passing into the potestas of the husband. A woman could transact legal business only with the repre sen ta tion of a tutor, who came from her father’s family, not her husband or his family; after she bore three children, the woman earned the ius trium liberorum and could act on her own behalf. Created by Augustus, the ius trium liberorum was a badge of honor, and it became a wild success. Th e wife brought a dowry into the marriage, but it was not a gift to the husband; the property of hus- THE MORALITIES OF SEX IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE  band and wife were, legally, distinct funds, and the married pair could not even make signifi cant gifts to one another. All of these rules had the eff ect of making the wife a partner of her husband, not a ward. We might suspect that Roman women earned considerable legal rights because fathers cared to protect their daughters, and their property, and not because Roman leg- islators held progressive attitudes toward women. Th e pressures behind de- velopments in family law are always complex, but what ever the cause, companionate marriage fl ourished in part because the Roman wife was perched, legally, between her old family and her new.  Th ough the Romans did not marry for love, they hoped it would grow within marriage. Marriage in the Roman Empire was freighted with high emotional and spiritual promise. A Roman lawyer could defi ne marriage as “the joining of a husband and a wife and a sharing of their whole life, a union of divine and human law.” Th ere was even a new openness to the potential for romance to germinate in the expectant period of the engage- ment.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  It was the recurrent problem of imagining them twenty, thirty years earlier—before I was born, when Charles was the age that Bill was now, and Bill was Phil’s age. He was looking forward then, building up his body like a store, a guarantee of his place in the future. Now the future had come he still hoarded and packed it. It sat opposite me, massive, gathering bullishly at the shoulders, the open shirt showing a broad V of black hair, the thighs splayed ponderously on the slashed and stitched upholstery of the banquette. I knew I could never love it or want it, but it was an achievement, this armour of useless masculinity. As we travelled west, through lit City stations like Bank and St Paul’s which I thought purposeless at night till I recalled that Charles, for one, would need them, that here and there in the City that was emptied for the weekend, people, eccentric or indigenous, still lived, my thoughts deserted Bill (though I still looked at him), and fled on down the rails to Phil. We were nearly at Tottenham Court Road, where Bill would have to change for the Northern Line, when he said, with tense cheeriness: ‘How’s young Phil getting on these days?’ I didn’t know how much he knew. Phil and I had been discreet, though together, at the Corry; but it was hard to tell what, in the crowded complex of the Club, had been seen, guessed or overheard. I gave a smile which could be read as a happy admission or an amiable ignorance. ‘All right, I should say,’ I offered neutrally. The old bashful earnestness crossed Bill’s face, and as the train fiercely slowed and the inertia carried him towards me he said bravely: ‘I loves that boy.’ His innocence and embarrassment were revealed in the relish he summoned up in his tone, and even more in the tortured affectation of saying loves. The train abruptly stopped, tilting him backwards as he rose, and he bustled off with a sad and hasty goodbye. June 9, 1925 : Back in London after nearly 2 years, & everyone complaining about the heat. Unable to wear shorts, open shirt & topi, I begin to see what they mean. The town, after Cairo & then Alexandria, is strikingly brisk & convenient—also much smaller, in detail if not in plan, than I’d expected; I’ve been going about with the sort of pleasure I used to have on getting back to Oxford after the vac, checking that it’s all there (which in fact it isn’t).

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  As I drove down the interstate to reach the prison, I noticed the long rays of sunlight retreating even as the heat of the Alabama summer persisted. When I arrived at the prison, it was completely dark. Outside the prison entrance were dozens of men with guns sitting on the backs of trucks that lined the long road to the prison parking area. They were state troopers, local police officers, deputy sheriffs, and what appeared to be part of a National Guard unit. I don’t know why the State felt they needed a militia to guard the entrance to the prison on the night of an execution. It was surreal to see all of these armed men gathered near midnight to make sure a life would be taken without incident. It fascinated me that someone thought there might be some violent, armed resistance to the scheduled execution of an indigent black man. I entered the prison and saw an older white woman—the correctional officer who managed the visitation yard. I had become a regular at death row visiting my new clients at least once a month, so she saw me frequently but had never been particularly friendly. Tonight she approached me with unusual warmth and familiarity when I arrived. I thought she was going to hug me. Men in suits and ties hovered in the lobby, eyeing me suspiciously as I walked into the visitation room at a little past nine. The visitation area at Holman is a large circular room surrounded by glass so that officers can look in from any vantage point. There are a dozen small tables with chairs inside for visiting family who come on visitation days, typically scheduled two or three times a month. During the week of a scheduled execution, only the condemned prisoner facing a scheduled death is permitted to have family visits. When I got inside the visiting room, the family had less than an hour left with Herbert. He was calmer than I had ever seen him. He smiled at me when I walked in and gave me a hug. “Hey y’all, this is my lawyer.” He said it with a pride that was surprising and moving to me. “Hello everyone,” I said. Herbert still had his arm around my shoulder, and I wanted to say something comforting but couldn’t think of anything before Herbert jumped in again. “I told the prison people that I want all my possessions distributed just as I’ve said or my lawyer will sue you till you all have to work for him.”

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I was astonished that he was so happy. I relaxed, too, and we began to talk. It turned out that we were exactly the same age. Henry asked me questions about myself, and I asked him about his life. Within an hour we were both lost in conversation. We talked about everything. He told me about his family, and he told me about his trial. He asked me about law school and my family. We talked about music, we talked about prison, we talked about what’s important in life and what’s not. I was completely absorbed in our conversation. We laughed at times, and there were moments when he was very emotional and sad. We kept talking and talking, and it was only when I heard a loud bang on the door that I realized I’d stayed way past my allotted time for the legal visit. I looked at my watch. I’d been there three hours. The guard came in and he was angry. He snarled at me, “You should have been done a long time ago. You have to leave.” He began handcuffing Henry, pulling his hands together behind his back and locking them there. Then he roughly shackled Henry’s ankles. The guard was so angry he put the cuffs on too tight. I could see Henry grimacing with pain. I said, “I think those cuffs are on too tight. Can you loosen them, please?” “I told you: You need to leave. You don’t tell me how to do my job.” Henry gave me a smile and said, “It’s okay, Bryan. Don’t worry about this. Just come back and see me again, okay?” I could see him wince with each click of the chains being tightened around his waist. I must have looked pretty distraught. Henry kept saying, “Don’t worry, Bryan, don’t worry. Come back, okay?” As the officer pushed him toward the door, Henry turned back to look at me. I started mumbling, “I’m really sorry. I’m really sor—” “Don’t worry about this, Bryan,” he said, cutting me off. “Just come back.” I looked at him and struggled to say something appropriate, something reassuring, something that expressed my gratitude to him for being so patient with me. But I couldn’t think of anything to say. Henry looked at me and smiled. The guard was shoving him toward the door roughly. I didn’t like the way Henry was being treated, but he continued to smile until, just before the guard could push him fully out of the room, he planted his feet to resist the officer’s shoving. He looked so calm. Then he did something completely unexpected. I watched him close his eyes and tilt his head back. I was confused by what he was doing, but then he opened his mouth and I understood. He began to sing.

• From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  CHAPTER 9Find Someone Who Loves You but Doesn’t Care about Hurt FeelingsRon Conway is best known as one of the greatest angel investors of all time. But he ought to be equally well known for his skill as a quitting coach. Conway, the founder of SV Angel, an early-stage venture fund, has been investing in start-ups since the nineties and is a legend in the venture-capital community. His list of successful angel investments may be unmatched, including many of the most famous companies of the last twenty-five years, including Facebook, Google, PayPal, Dropbox, Airbnb, Pinterest, Twitter, and Snapchat. Conway is obviously great at picking winners. Starting a new venture requires grit. Conway is known for his ability to help founders navigate the challenging ups and downs of growing what begins as nothing more than a vision into a successful, world-changing company. You are likely not surprised that someone of Ron Conway’s stature provides enormous value by helping these founders to develop the right strategic vision, stick to it, and make it work. But you might be surprised that he is especially proud of his ability in helping founders figure out when it’s the right time to quit. He sums up his philosophy in three words: Life’s too short. What Conway recognizes is that we all have a limited time on this planet to devote to different opportunities we might pursue. Founding, running, and growing a start-up is already brutally hard work. In his experience, founders tend to be driven, gritty, and brilliant individuals. People with these qualities are in great demand at established companies, for jobs with comfortable hours and great pay. But founders have all chosen a different path, and what comes with that path is hundred-hour workweeks, unrelenting stress, and practically no pay. Famously, some founders have gotten most of their sleep—which isn’t much—in their parents’ garage or on the floor of their office. Obviously, the chance to change the world and the outsized rewards that come with succeeding can make it worthwhile for them to persevere. But in Conway’s thinking, life’s too short to take on all that suffering once it’s clear that the probability is too high that those things are out of reach. Even for someone with Conway’s nose for value, only about 10% of the start-ups he invests in will make money. That means, by definition, that 90% of these ventures will fail. Doing anything but encouraging someone with so much promise to move on would be cruel, a sad waste of human potential. That’s what Conway means when he says, “Life’s too short.” Of course, it’s almost never the case that the founders can recognize for themselves the moment when their journey is no longer worth continuing, because they’re on the inside looking out. Conway, as a knowledgeable outsider with a wealth of experience, can see it before they can see it for themselves.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  What was more interesting was to see how, over the five years at the school, the hand had changed, casting off the juvenile fanciness for later, adolescent, affectations. Equally illegible, the writing came to look less monkish and stilted, and took on a passionate, cursive air. Certain characters, ‘d’, for example, and ‘g’, became the subject for worried stylistic amendment and experiment. Little ’e’s, in particular, were restless—now Greekly sticking out their pointed tongues, now curling up in copperplate propriety. I remembered people at school attaching similar prestige to handwriting, though I never did much to adjust my own frankly careless scrawl. I would certainly have been too slovenly to have stuck, as Charles had done, to the virtually useless annotation of my life in a book for five years. It was one of those changeless schooltime occupations, which have no function beyond themselves, and I was touched to think of Charles as a prefect fitting in the details of match scores and books each evening on the same page that he had used as a new man, his eye flicking back each year over the slowly accumulating trivia. There must have been so much more, for the book showed only the self-imposed thoroughness of the dull-witted or the lonely. I had no doubt that Charles’s wits had been quick; and if he was lonely, then his thoughts would not have been taken up with fixtures and Latin verbs, he would have been living in his imagination. The next time I saw him was in the pool, where I was thrashing up and down as usual and nearly bumped into him in the underwater gloom. He was not swimming, but floating just off the deep end: head back, hands on hips, his body seemed to be buoyed up by the white balloon of his stomach, and his legs hung down at an angle below. He was quite still, and his pushed-back goggles gave the impression that his eyes had rolled back into his head, while his body was abandoned to a trance. Though to my mind he looked dead, there was something wonderfully natural about the way he just lay on and in the water, as though on a half-submerged lilo; among the heavy swimmers and divers he seemed serenely disengaged, and I was amused, when I realised who it was, that he inhabited the water in a way that was all his own. At every other turn I saw him, from underwater; and he revolved occasionally with little flips of the hands, like some benign though monstrous amphibian. I left the pool without disturbing him. In the hallway, as I was leaving, I found Phil hanging around.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I shd have gone straight to the house, & darted over to it now to get my medicine case, fumbled to check it & close it, bounded out across the yard. My change of role made it possible for me to push him around, to enter with brusque disinterest into a kind of closeness to him that otherwise wd have remained unattainable—though it beckoned & was approached through a thousand hints & formalities. I tugged him, & he half slithered, to the step’s edge, & tugged at his hands too which were locked with desperate tightness around his leg. The sting was some way below, on the shallow, boyish incline of the calf—just where one would have stung, I thought—& looking pretty nasty. I whipped out the tourniquet & drew it to its tightest notch around his upper leg (I was severe as a matron with that stiff rubber strap). And fussily, necessarily, I shoved back the gathered folds of his djellaba, baring his thighs, glancing at them as well—though with a curiosity almost annulled by the ethical transfiguration I was enabled for a few minutes to undergo. Not so Hassan, however, who had been hovering excitedly behind me, in a state somewhere between despair & delight, & leant forward all helpfully at this point to draw the djellaba up tidily and expose the child’s private parts to his greedy glance—though after a second or two Taha brushed the folds of cloth forward again & gave Hassan, I noticed, a pained, abstracted look. As well he might, for the old lecher had hardly chosen the best moment—indeed it was a prurient piece of advantage-taking, & since it also satisfied a curiosity of my own I admonished him & sent him back indoors, before (& all this was only the matter of seconds) taking my scalpel to the boy’s inflamed leg and cutting out the sting with such delicate suddenness & firmness that he was amazed when I showed it to him between my fingers, & when he sat up & saw the blood trickling down his calf. I squeezed & cleaned & dressed the thing as best I could. Though I had been quick enough, some damage had been done & he was already a little feverish; so I picked him up—he was quite heavy & hung on to my neck with both arms, like a child not fully awoken—& took him in & laid him on the camp-bed in the room next to mine. He is there now, almost better I think, though I have put him to sleep. Hassan has been bringing in meals for us both—Taha cd manage for the first time this evening some broth, & I sat with him & ate some gazelle & some beans—excellently done, though I was stern with the cook & told him Taha was very ill & that he must treat him with consideration & not bother him.

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

  The earliest stirrings of a new consciousness are preserved in the sermons of Basil of Caesarea. This origin is fitting, both because the homiletic context demonstrates the practical role of pastoral Christianity, and because Basil’s canons demonstrate an effort toward systematic thought. Basil and his Cappadocian colleagues were avid readers of Origen, from whom they drank deeply the gospel of freedom. For Basil, experience as the leader of a vast and rapidly growing community gradually exposed him to the contradictions between his ideology and the structure of the society around him. Prostitution brought bishops face-to-face with the fact that even if sex were a matter of sin, not all sex was the outcome of free will. The clearest expression of the idea occurred in one of Basil’s sermons on the Psalms, as he was explaining to his congregation the problem of pain and injustice. “If you ask why the life of the sinner is long, but the days of the just man are cut short, why the wicked prosper and the good are oppressed, why the child is snatched away before his time, where war comes from, why ships wreck, why the earth shakes, why the waters flood, or drought strikes, why afflictions were created for mankind, why this man is a slave and this man free, why this man is rich and this man poor—the difference is greater among those who commit sin and those who are righteous. For while the slave woman who was sold to a pimp is in sin by necessity, she who happens to belong to a wellborn mistress was raised with sexual modesty, and on this account the one is shown mercy, the other condemned.”73

• From The Songs of Bilitis (1894)

  It has grown late, there is the song of the green frogs who begin with the night. My mother will never believe that I have stayed so long searching for my lost girdle. XXX THE HAIR He said to me: “Last night I dreamed. I had thy hair about my neck. I had thy locks like a black collar about my neck and over my breast. “I caressed them; and they were mine; and we were bound thus forever, by the same locks, mouth upon mouth, like two laurels with but one root. “And, little by little, it seemed to me that our limbs were mingled; that I became thyself and that thou didst enter into me like my dream.” When he had finished he softly laid his hands upon my shoulders and looked at me with so tender a regard that I lowered my eyes, shivering. XXXI THE CUP Lykas saw me come to him clad only in a light scarf, for the days had become overwhelming; he wished to mould my breast which remained uncovered. He took fine clay, kneaded in the fresh, clear water. When he laid it upon my skin I thought I should faint, for the earth was very cold. From my moulded breast, he made a cup, round and umbilicated. He placed it in the sun to dry and tinted it with purple and ochre by pressing flowers all around it. Then we went to the fountain which is consecrated to the nymphs and threw the cup into the current with stalks of gillyflowers. XXXII ROSES IN THE NIGHT When the night mounts into the sky, the world belongs to us and to the gods. We go over the fields to the spring, the dark wood to the glades, wherever our naked feet lead us. The little stars shine enough for such little shadows as we are. Sometimes, beneath the branches, we find sleeping hinds. But more charming than all else, in the night, is a place known only to ourselves which attracts us across the forest: a thicket of mysterious roses. For nothing in the world is so divine as the perfume of roses in the night. How is it that, in the time when I was alone, I never felt their intoxication? XXXIII REMORSE At first I did not reply; shame flushed upon my cheeks, and the beatings of my heart hurt my breasts. Then I resisted, I said: “No. No.” I turned away my head and the kiss did not open my lips, nor love my fast closed knees. Then he begged my forgiveness, he kissed my hair, I felt his burning breath, and he departed.... Now, I am alone. I regard the empty place, the deserted wood, the trampled earth. And I bite my fingers until they bleed and smother my cries in the grass. XXXIV THE INTERRUPTED SLEEP

• From The Songs of Bilitis (1894)

  Her tomb was found by M. C. Heim at Paleo-Limisso, at the side of an antique road, not far from the ruins of Amathus. These ruins have almost disappeared within the last thirty years and the stones of the house where perhaps Bilitis lived, today pave the quays of Port Said. But the tomb was subterranean, according to the Phœnician custom, and it had escaped even the treasure hunters. M. Heim entered it by a narrow pit, once filled with earth, at the bottom of which he found a walled-up door which had to be demolished. The wide, low tomb, paved with slabs of limestone, had four walls covered with plaques of black amphibolite, on which were graven, in primitive capitals, all the songs we are about to read, except the three epitaphs which decorated the sarcophagus. There reposed the friend of Mnasidika in a great coffin of terra-cotta, under a cover modeled in delicate sculpture which figured in the clay the visage of the dead. The hair was painted black, the eyes half closed and prolonged by the crayon as though she were living and the painted cheek softened by a slight smile which brought out the lines of the mouth. Nothing can ever tell of those lips, so clean-cut, with a soft outward curve, united one to the other and as though intoxicated by their own contact. When the tomb was opened, she appeared in the state in which a pious hand had placed her, twenty-four centuries before. Vials of perfume hung from pegs of clay, and one of these, after so long a time, was still fragrant. The mirror of polished silver in which Bilitis had viewed herself, the stylus which had trailed the blue pigment over her eyelids, were found in their place. A little naked Astarte, relic forever precious, watched always over the skeleton ornamented with all its jewels of gold, and white like a snow-covered branch, but so soft and so fragile that at the first breath it mingled with the dust. PIERRE LOUŸS. Constantinople. August 1894. I BUCOLICS IN PAMPHYLIA Ἀδύ δέ μοι τό μέλισμα, καὶ ἤν σύριγγι μελίσδω κἤν αύλῷ λαλέω, κἤν δώνκκι, κἤν πλαγιαύλῳ. THEOCRITOS. “Sweet, too, is my music, whether I make melody on pipe, or discourse on the flute, or reed, or flageolet.” (XX--28-29. Lang.) THE TREE Stripped of my clothes, I climbed into a tree; my bare thighs embraced the smooth, moist bark; my sandals trod upon the branches. At the top, yet under the leaves and shadowed from the heat, I sat astride a projecting branch and balanced my feet in the void. It rained. The water drops fell and slipped over my skin. My hands were stained with moss and my toes were reddened from crushed flowers. When the wind passed through the branches I felt the fair life of the tree; then I pressed my legs yet closer and laid my open lips upon the hairy nape of a bough. II PASTORAL SONG

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Even when I was in Alabama, I made time for talks at community events whenever anyone asked. I was in a poor rural county in Alabama after another trip to pull records in a death penalty case when I was invited to speak at a small African American church. Only about two dozen people showed up. One of the community leaders introduced me, and I went to the front of the church and began my talk about the death penalty, increasing incarceration rates, abuse of power within prisons, discriminatory law enforcement, and the need for reform. At one point, I decided to talk about my encounter with the police in Atlanta, and I realized that I was getting a bit emotional. My voice got shaky, and I had to rein myself in to finish my remarks. During the talk, I noticed an older black man in a wheelchair who had come in just before the program started. He was in his seventies and was wearing an old brown suit. His gray hair was cut short with unruly tufts here and there. He looked at me intensely throughout my presentation but showed no emotion or reaction during most of the talk. His focused stare was unnerving. A young boy who was about twelve had wheeled him into the church, probably his grandson or a relative. I noticed that the man occasionally directed the boy to fetch things for him. He would wordlessly nod his head, and the boy seemed to know that the man wanted a fan or a hymnal. After I finished speaking, the group sang a hymn to end the session. The older man didn’t sing but simply closed his eyes and sat back in his chair. After the program, people came up to me; most folks were very kind and expressed appreciation for my having taken the time to come and talk to them. Several young black boys walked up to shake my hand. I was pleased that people seemed to value the information I shared. The man in the wheelchair was waiting in the back of the church. He was still staring at me. When everyone else had left, he nodded to the young boy, who quickly wheeled him up to me. The man’s expression never changed as he approached me. He stopped in front of me, leaned forward in his wheelchair, and said forcefully, “Do you know what you’re doing?” He looked very serious, and he wasn’t smiling. His question threw me. I couldn’t tell what he was really asking or whether he was being hostile. I didn’t know what to say. He then wagged his finger at me, and asked again. “Do you know what you’re doing?” I tried to smile to defuse the situation but I was completely baffled. “I think so....” He cut me off and said loudly, “I’ll tell you what you’re doing. You’re beating the drum for justice!”

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  The immense, leafy twilight shivered, and the three fountains, shooting up their forceful jets, reckless and almost invisible, splattered down across the path and caught us in their spray. Phil put his arm round me, remembering too, I suppose, our first terrifying walk here. The kitchen at the Queensberry was a high, white-tiled hall into which plunged a series of writhing air-ducts, tubes of aluminium, riveted along their joints, and opening out into wide, battered hoods above the loaded and archaic gas-ranges. Even so, it was wearyingly hot in there, and the team of chefs, in their crumpled white jackets and hats and their blue and white checked bags, were testy and pink-faced, shying the portions that were ordered along the metal counter beyond which the waiters waited. As ‘staff’ we had to wait there too, until there was a convenient pause. I felt awkward, ready to be resented, whenever we visited the kitchen. Its incessant toil, unadorned by the servility and charm of the public parts of the hotel, made me feel a frivolous observer of some truly serious industry. Tonight Phil got us some whitebait—dull, Rotarian starter—and then excellent beef olives, the fat tongue of veal juicy in its meaty sheath. We ate it in the staff dining-room, keeping to ourselves whilst two of the washing-up women and a leathery old porter smoked fanatically through the last minutes of their dinner-hour. ‘Off out tonight, then, young Philip?’ enquired the porter, preparing to go, hoisting up his waistband and buttoning his hot jacket. There seemed to be some hint of contempt in his voice, a sarcasm in his civility which showed it to be a challenge, even an insult. As he drew himself up, he was somehow shielding and shepherding the two women—though they themselves betrayed no sense of danger. ‘Yes, I’ll probably go out for a drink or two.’ A subfusc, minimal answer. ‘Don’t stay in this fucking shithouse anyway,’ said one of the women kindly. ‘I won’t.’ ‘Don’t go breakin’ too many ’earts, neither,’ said the other with a chuckle. I said nothing until they had gone. They probably thought me very stuck up, but I felt a kind of duty not to incriminate Phil. It was hard to believe they didn’t see me for what I was, but a pretence, a performance, was sustained that we were just pals. Rather like James, Phil cultivated a reserve that grew into a sort of authority. I must have needed their discretion just as they were freed by my lack of it. It was all a question of bjopti. I finished eating and laid my knife and fork side by side. ‘Am I a frightful liability to you, darling?’ I said, conceitedly and solemnly.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I would like to have stayed with her always: I would have chosen her for my own mother had I been permitted. I remember distinctly how when my mother arrived on a visit she seemed peeved that I was so contented with my new life. She even remarked that I was ungrateful, a remark I never forgot, because then I realized for the first time that to be ungrateful was perhaps necessary and good for one. If I close my eyes now and I think about it, about the slice of bread, I think almost at once that in this house I never knew what it was to be scolded. I think if I had told my Aunt Caroline that I had killed a boy in the lot, told her just how it happened, she would have put her arms around me and forgiven me—instantly. That’s why perhaps that summer is so precious to me. It was a summer of tacit and complete absolution. That’s why I can’t forget Weesie either. She was full of a natural goodness, a child who was in love with me and who made no reproaches. She was the first of the other sex to admire me for being different . After Weesie it was the other way round. I was loved, but I was hated too for being what I was. Weesie made an effort to understand. The very fact that I came from a strange country, that I spoke another language, drew her closer to me. The way her eyes shone when she presented me to her little friends is something I will never forget. Her eyes seemed to be bursting with love and admiration. Sometimes the three of us would walk to the riverside in the evening and sitting on the bank we would talk as children talk when they are out of sight of their elders. We talked then, I know it now so well, more sanely and more profoundly than our parents. To give us that thick slice of bread each day the parents had to pay a heavy penalty. The worst penalty was that they became estranged from us. For, with each slice they fed us we became not only more indifferent to them, but we became more and more superior to them. In our ungratefulness was our strength and our beauty. Not being devoted we were innocent of all crime. The boy whom I saw drop dead, who lay there motionless, without making the slightest sound or whimper, the killing of that boy seems almost like a clean, healthy performance. The struggle for food, on the other hand, seems foul and degrading and when we stood in the presence of our parents we sensed that they had come to us unclean and for that we could never forgive them. The thick slice of bread in the afternoons, precisely because it was not earned, tasted delicious to us. Never again will bread taste this way.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  I have assured his future; he does not like Italy; he will be able to realize his dream, which is to return to Gadara and open a school of eloquence there with a friend; he has nothing to lose by my death. And nevertheless the slight shoulder moves convulsively under the folds of his tunic; on my fingers I feel those tender tears. To the last, Hadrian will have been loved in human wise. Little soul, gentle and drifting, guest and companion of my body, now you will dwell below in pallid places, stark and bare; there you will abandon your play of yore. But one moment still, let us gaze together on these familiar shores, on these objects which doubtless we shall not see again. . . . Let us try, if we can, to enter into death with open eyes. . . . TO THE DEIFIED AUGUST HADRIAN SON OF TRAJAN CONQUEROR OF THE PARTHIANS GRANDSON OF NERVA HIGH PONTIFF HONORED FOR THE XXIIND TIME WITH THE TRIBUNICIAN POWER THREE TIMES CONSUL TWO TIMES HAILED IN TRIUMPH FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY AND TO HIS DEIFIED SPOUSE SABINA ANTONINUS THEIR SON DEDICATES THIS MEMORIAL TO LUCIUS AELIUS CAESAR SON OF THE DEIFIED HADRIAN TWO TIMES CONSUL BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE A reconstruction of an historical figure and of the world of his time written in the first person borders on the domain of fiction, and sometimes of poetry; it can therefore dispense with formal statement of evidence for the historical facts concerned. Its human significance, however, is greatly enriched by close adherence to those facts. Since the main object of the author here has been to approach inner reality, if possible, through careful examination of what the documents themselves afford, it seems advisable to offer the reader some discussion of the principal materials employed, though not to present a complete bibliography, which would extend beyond the scope of the present volume. Some brief indication will also be given of the comparatively few changes, all of secondary importance, which add to, or cautiously modify, what history has told us. The reader who likes to consider sources at first hand will not necessarily know where to find the principal ancient texts relating to Hadrian, or even what they are, since most of them come down to us from writers of the late classical period who are relatively little read, and who are ordinarily familiar only to specialists. Our two chief authorities are the Greek historian Dio Cassius and the Latin chronicler known by the name of Spartianus.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  It has a temple to Achilles. Terns, gulls, and petrels, all hinds of sea birds frequent this sanctuary, and its porch is cooled by the continual fanning of their wings still moist from the sea. But this isle of Achilles is also, as it should be, the isle of Patroclus, and the innumerable votive offerings which decorate the temple walls are dedicated sometimes to Achilles and sometimes to his friend, for of course whoever loves Achilles cherishes and venerates Patroclus' memory. Achilles himself appears in dream to the navigators who visit these parts: he protects them and warns them of the sea's dangers, as Castor and Pollux do elsewhere. And the shade of Patroclus appears at Achilles' side. I report these things to you because I think them worthy to be known, and because those who told them to me have experienced them themselves, or have learned them from credible witnesses. . . . Achilles sometimes seems to me the greatest of men in his courage, his fortitude, his learning and intelligence coupled with bodily skill, and his ardent love for his young companion. And nothing in him seems to me nobler than the despair which made him despise life and long for death when he had lost his beloved. I laid down the voluminous report of the governor of Armenia Minor, admiral of the expeditionary fleet. As always Arrian has worked well. But this time he is doing more than that: he offers me a gift which I need if I am to die in peace; he sends me a picture of my life as I should have wished it to be. Arrian knows that what counts is something which will not figure in official biographies and which is not written on tombs; he knows also that the passing of time only adds one more bewilderment to grief. As seen by him the adventure of my existence takes on meaning and achieves a form, as in a poem; that unique affection frees itself from remorse, impatience, and vain obsessions as from so much smoke, or so much dust; sorrow is decanted and despair runs pure. Arrian opens to me the vast empyrean of heroes and friends, judging me not too unworthy of it. My hidden study built at the center of a pool in the Villa is not internal enough as a refuge; I drag this body there, grown old, and suffer there. My past life, to be sure, affords me certain retreats where I escape from at least some part of my present afflictions: the snowy plain along the Danube, the gardens of Nicomedia, Claudiopolis turned gold in the harvest of flowering saffron, Athens (no matter what street), an oasis where water lilies ripple above the ooze, the Syrian desert by starlight on the return from Osro�s' camp.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I do what I do because I’m broken, too. My years of struggling against inequality, abusive power, poverty, oppression, and injustice had finally revealed something to me about myself. Being close to suffering, death, executions, and cruel punishments didn’t just illuminate the brokenness of others; in a moment of anguish and heartbreak, it also exposed my own brokenness. You can’t effectively fight abusive power, poverty, inequality, illness, oppression, or injustice and not be broken by it. We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. I desperately wanted mercy for Jimmy Dill and would have done anything to create justice for him, but I couldn’t pretend that his struggle was disconnected from my own. The ways in which I have been hurt—and have hurt others—are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us. Paul Farmer, the renowned physician who has spent his life trying to cure the world’s sickest and poorest people, once quoted me something that the writer Thomas Merton said: We are bodies of broken bones. I guess I’d always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we’re fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we’re shattered by things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion. We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity. I thought of the guards strapping Jimmy Dill to the gurney that very hour. I thought of the people who would cheer his death and see it as some kind of victory. I realized they were broken people, too, even if they would never admit it. So many of us have become afraid and angry. We’ve become so fearful and vengeful that we’ve thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak—not because they are a threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes us seem tough, less broken.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I tried to stand again, lifting myself a few inches before I dropped back down. I heard a sound then and looked up, and saw coming up the path toward me the fat shape of Mama Dog, her tail beating in the dark. She was the only dog allowed on campus; for years she had kept other dogs away, but now she was too old to guard anything, and she spent most of the day sleeping, on the porches of our houses or beside the guards where they sat in the shade. She was always happy to see me, I gave her treats sometimes, but I didn’t have anything for her now, and I told her this, Nyamam nishto, opening my empty hands. She cocked her head, that look of understanding dogs give, or of wanting to understand, their demand for attention. Obicham te, I said to her, I love you, but tonight I don’t have anything, go away, I said, mahai se, and I made a shooing motion with my hand. But she didn’t go, she stood staring at me, the movement of her tail slowing just slightly, and then she inched forward and pressed her snout against my hand, her nose wet in my palm. Still I didn’t respond, but she insisted, jerking her nose up as if to toss my hand to her head, where she wanted to be scratched. I laughed and said Okay, Mama, okay, as I raked my fingers through her fur. She whined happily and came closer, pressing her trunk against my leg and rippling her body in that puppyish movement that communicates joy better than anything we can manage, and I used both hands to scratch along her sides, feeling bits of leaf and pine needles and accumulated grime. You’re filthy, I said, but I love you, and I bent my face down to hers, touching our foreheads together and gripping her in something like a hug. She tolerated this briefly, and then she tilted her snout slightly up and quickly licked my face, her tongue wet across my lips. I pulled back, making a sound of disgust and wiping my lips clean, but then I laughed again.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I tried to stand again, lifting myself a few inches before I dropped back down. I heard a sound then and looked up, and saw coming up the path toward me the fat shape of Mama Dog, her tail beating in the dark. She was the only dog allowed on campus; for years she had kept other dogs away, but now she was too old to guard anything, and she spent most of the day sleeping, on the porches of our houses or beside the guards where they sat in the shade. She was always happy to see me, I gave her treats sometimes, but I didn’t have anything for her now, and I told her this, Nyamam nishto, opening my empty hands. She cocked her head, that look of understanding dogs give, or of wanting to understand, their demand for attention. Obicham te, I said to her, I love you, but tonight I don’t have anything, go away, I said, mahai se, and I made a shooing motion with my hand. But she didn’t go, she stood staring at me, the movement of her tail slowing just slightly, and then she inched forward and pressed her snout against my hand, her nose wet in my palm. Still I didn’t respond, but she insisted, jerking her nose up as if to toss my hand to her head, where she wanted to be scratched. I laughed and said Okay, Mama, okay, as I raked my fingers through her fur. She whined happily and came closer, pressing her trunk against my leg and rippling her body in that puppyish movement that communicates joy better than anything we can manage, and I used both hands to scratch along her sides, feeling bits of leaf and pine needles and accumulated grime. You’re filthy, I said, but I love you, and I bent my face down to hers, touching our foreheads together and gripping her in something like a hug. She tolerated this briefly, and then she tilted her snout slightly up and quickly licked my face, her tongue wet across my lips. I pulled back, making a sound of disgust and wiping my lips clean, but then I laughed again.

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

  Prostitution brought bishops face- to- face with the fact that even if sex were a matter of sin, not all sex was the outcome of free will. Th e clearest expression of the idea occurred in one of Basil’s sermons on the Psalms, as he was explaining to his congregation the problem of pain and injustice. “If you ask why the life of the sinner is long, but the days of the just man are cut short, why the wicked prosper and the good are oppressed, why the child is snatched away before his time, where war comes from, why ships wreck, why the earth shakes, why the waters fl ood, or drought strikes, why affl ictions were created for mankind, why this man is a slave and this man free, why this man is rich and this man poor— the diff erence is greater among those who commit sin and those who are righ teous. For while the slave woman who was sold to a pimp is in sin by necessity, she who happens to belong to a wellborn mistress was raised with sexual modesty, and on this account the one is shown mercy, the other condemned.” Without any natural impetus to use the example of prostitution, it came to mind as the coerced sin par excellence. Th e problem of evil was a chal- lenge to Christian theodicy, but Basil’s God was intuitively just, and he would spare the innocent. Basil simply assumed that a prostitute was a slave, sold to a pimp. She was in sin as a result, but forgiven by God. In contrast, the honorable woman had agency in her sexual immorality, and as a result her actions were damnable. Basil’s notion that some prostitutes were condemned to sexual sin through coercion was by no means an incidental or passing thought. In another sermon, Basil explicitly contrasted two prostitutes. Some sins, he said, were “involuntary,” others from a “wicked disposition.” Here we see fully articulated the stark diff erence between voluntary sin and coerced sin. “One prostitute has been sold to the pimp and is in evil  F R O M S H A M E TO S I N because of necessity, for she must provide her body for the work of her wicked master. But there is another who gives herself to sin voluntarily, because of plea sure.” In a more systematic context— one of his canonical letters— Basil carried his thought to its logical conclusion. “Sexual violations that occur through necessity are to be without blame.” Basil’s canon represents a monumental breakdown of the traditional social and mental barriers that had insulated the church from the need to think about the material realities behind sin. Here is a not insignifi cant expansion of human consciousness. Basil cut through the curtain that had for centuries blocked the need to think about the moral capacity of society’s most vulnerable.