To indulge one's instinctive and uncontrolled sense of justice and right, was not, he had found, permitted with impunity in an old civilization like ours. It was necessary to act under an acquired and cultivated sense of the same, if you wished to enjoy an average share of comfort and honour; and to let crude loving kindness take care of itself.
I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before. You do that first, in your head, and then you make it real. So that's how they do it, I thought. I seemed never to have known that before.
His head is a little below mine, so that when he looks up at me it's at a juvenile angle. It must amuse him, this fake subservience.(...)The problem wasn't only the women, he says. The main problem was with the men. There was nothing for them any more.(...)That was part of it, the sex was too easy. Anyone could just buy it. There was nothing to work for, nothing to fight for. (...)