“I have never been a violent man. Just a little creepy, it seems.”
“I'm sympathetic to the nuns' violent impulses. I mean, if I'd given up sex to devote myself to a man who I had to just trust loved me, despite never being physically around to prove it, I'd probably be smacking little children too.”
“But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little have been tried.”
“I'd been hurt, and in response I had acted violently, destroying a little of myself each time I did so.”
“Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too, just once. And never again. But to have been this once, completely, even if only once: to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.”
“A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident.”