Words&Dirt

“Far from justifying principles that are shown to be ‘natural,’ a biological explanation is often a way of debunking the lofty status of what seemed a self-evident moral law.  We must think again about the reasons for accepting those principles for which a biological explanation can be given.”

––The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress, by Peter Singer, pg. 71

“Once inside, as she reaches for the light switch, he knocks her arm down, pulls her around, and kisses her.  It’s insanity, he wants to crush her, a little gauge inside his ribs doubles and redoubles his need for pressure, just pure pressure, there is no love in it, love that glances and glides along the skin, he is unconscious of their skins, it is her heart he wants to grind into his own, to comfort her completely.  By nature in such an embrace she fights back.  The small moist cushion of slack willingness with which her lips had greeted his dries up and turns hard, and when she can get her head back and her hand free she fits her palm against his jaw and pushes as if she wanted to throw his skull back into the hall.  Her fingers curl and a long nail scrapes the tender skin below one eye.  He lets her go.”

––Rabbit, Run, by John Updike, pg. 66