Craig

“If the Nazis required that humiliation precede extermination, then they admitted exactly what they worked so hard to avoid admitting: the humanity of the victim. To humiliate is to accept that you r victim feels and thinks, that he not only feels pain, but know that he's being degraded. And because the torturer knew in an instant of recognition that his victim was not a "figuren" bu a man, and knew at that same moment he must continue his task, he suddenly understood the Nazi mechanism. Just as the stone-carrier knew his only chance of survival was to fulfill his task as if he didn't know its futility, so the torturer decided to do his job as if he didn't know the lie. The photos capture again and again this chilling moment of choice: the laughter of the damned. When the soldier realized that only death has the power to turn "man" into "figuren", his difficulty was solved. And so the rage and sadism increased: his fury at the victim for suddenly turning human; his desire to destroy that humanness so intense his brutality had no limit.”
― Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

“Each marriage that breaks interrogates those that continue to hold.”
― Salman Rushdie, Fury

“one of those passions that flare up when one is young--when love and ideas seem truly to be one's personal discovery, never before apprehended in quite this way; during that brief period of youth when one feels free to do or say anything; to shock, to strike out; to refuse the future that's been offered and demand another, far grander and stranger, devised and owned wholly by oneself...”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

“But it was from the difference between us, not from the affinities and likenesses, but from the difference, that that love came: and it was itself the bridge, the only bridge, across what divided us.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness