7
" The people were divided into the persecuted and those who persecuted them. That wile beast, which lives in man and does not dare to show itself until the barriers of law and custom have been removed, was now set free. The signal was given, the barriers were down. As has so often happened in the history of man, permission was tacitly granted for acts of violence and plunder, even for murder, if they were carried out in the name of higher interests, according to established rules, and against a limited number of men of a particular type and belief....In a few minutes the business quarter, based on centuries of tradition, was wiped out. It is true that there had always been concealed enmities and jealousies and religious intolerance, coarseness and cruelty, but there had also been courage and fellowship and a feeling for measure and order, which restrained all these instincts within the limits of the supportable and, in the end, calmed them down and submitted them to the general interest of life in common. Men who had been leaders in the commercial quarter for forty years vanished overnight as if they had all died suddenly, together with the habits, customs and institutions which they represented.
p. 11 "
― , Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War
8
" One night, we somehow ended up discussing Wile E. Coyote as a paradigm for obsession. She argued that Wile E., with all the resources he wasted on gadgets, could have been living high on the hog.
“He was so skinny,” she complained after she had Googled him and watched a few skits on YouTube. “Poor thing, he looks like a size-zero model.”
“But, Love, no other food would have satisfied him. He only wanted the Road Runner. He was obsessed with her. Obsession does not allow for satisfaction. You can never really eat your cake and have it too, which is the only way you can satisfy your obsession by devouring and yet having the object of your fascination,” I said from experience.
“But he really didn't want to catch it,” she argued.
“What do you mean?”
“It was the chase he wanted. To eat the Road Runner would have ended that, ended his only reason for living. He isn't really that inept. He really didn't want to catch it.”
“I guess not,” I said, thoughtfully. “It's the journey not the resolution that matters. If he caught her, he would lie down next to her and die too. "
― Candice Raquel Lee , The Innocent
