Sublime

Apathy, the blunting of the emotions and the feeling that one could not care any more, were the symptoms arising during the second stage of the prisoner’s psychological reactions, and which eventually made him insensitive to daily and hourly beatings.

When he died I had been away from home for a little over a year. In that year I had had time to become aware of the meaning of all my father’s bitter warnings, had discovered the secret of his proudly pursed lips and rigid carriage: I had discovered the weight of white people in the world. I saw that this had been for my ancestors and now would be

I dropped that apple, and, lo, it was putrid and full of worms. Then he spoke the truth: we didn’t have death. We had dead people. We had casualties and we had victims. We had more or less innocent bystanders. We had body counts and sometimes even photos in the newspapers of body bags, though many felt it was wrong to show them. We had “unequal hea

I went back to [Hannah] Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem and reread sections of it. I was looking for a clue as to what she meant by “the banality of evil,” which she defines as a “kind of thoughtlessness.” I guess I think of evil as in some way connected with self-deception. —Morris

tout l’ordonnancement fut brisé par une sorte d’affliction brute et extatique, comme je n’en ai jamais connu, ni avant ni après, à l’occasion d’un enterrement. Et cette immense douleur, qui s’élevait convulsivement des profondeurs de tout un peuple de plusieurs millions d’hommes, me fit mesurer pour la première fois quelle somme de passion et d’esp

What was done to her was done to her many times, by many. What was done to her could not be resisted, was not resisted, sometimes was resisted, which resulted, sometimes, in her being sent away to some far worse place, other times in that resistance simply being forcibly overcome (by fist, knee, board-strike, etc.). What was done to her was done an

Durant ces mois, j’ai souvent réfléchi à ce que j’essayais de faire, à la difficulté de maintenir en vie une personne qui désire mourir. Dans un premier temps, on a recours à la logique (Tu as tant de raisons de continuer à vivre), puis on tente la culpabilité (Tu m’es redevable), et puis la colère, les menaces, et la supplication (Je suis vieux ;

Cigarettes—sixty cigarettes or more each day, lit one from the end of another—had been so desperately important to him for so long. Now Cain and Hurst confirmed what Dr. Gibson had told him in the ambulance: the smoking must stop immediately and completely. Lyndon Johnson tore the wrapper off a pack of cigarettes, opened the pack and pulled one cig