Excel Export Without Double Quotes

Almondine

To her, the scent and the memory of him were one. Where it lay strongest, the distant past came to her as if that morning: Taking a dead sparrow from her jaws, before she knew to hide such things. Guiding her to the floor, bending her knee until the arthritis made it stick, his palm hotsided on her ribs to measure her breaths and know where the pain began. And to comfort her. That had been the week before he went away.

He was gone, she knew this, but something of him clung to the baseboards. At times the floor quivered under his footstep. She stood then and nosed into the kitchen and the bathroom and the bedroom-especially the closet-her intention to press her ruff against his hand, run it along his thigh, feel the heat of his body through the fabric.

Places, times, weather-all these drew him up inside her. Rain, especially, falling past the double doors of the kennel, where he'd waited through so many storms, each drop throwing a dozen replicas into the air as it struck the waterlogged earth. And where the rising and falling water met, something like an expectation formed, a place where he might appear and pass in long strides, silent and gestureless. For she was not without her own selfish desires: to hold things motionless, to measure herself against them and find herself present, to know that she was alive precisely because he needn't acknowledge her in casual passing; that utter constancy might prevail if she attended the world ~ David Wroblewski

A double shot of Laphroaig twenty-five-year-old, neat, please. And ask the bartender for a small shot glass of spring water, non-sparkling," Gabriel instructed without making eye contact with the waitress.
The waitress left, and Rachel began to laugh. "Big brother, only you could make ordering a drink sound pretentious."
-Rachel to Gabriel ~ Sylvain Reynard

The writer Lee Smith, who once had a New York copy editor query in the margin of her manuscript "Double-wide what?" tells a perfectly marvelous, spot-on story about Eudora Welty when she came to Hollins College, where Smith was a student. Welty read a short story in which one female character presents another with a marble cake. In the back of the audience Smith noted a group of leather-elbowed, goatee-sporting PhD candidates, all of whom were getting pretty excited. One started waving his hand as soon as she stopped reading and said, "Miz Welty, how did you come up with that powerful symbol of the marble cake, with the feminine and masculine, the yin and the yang, the Freudian and the Jungian all mixed together like that?" Smith reported that Welty looked at him from the lectern without saying anything for a while. Finally she replied mildly, "Well, you see, it's a recipe that's been in my family for some time. ~ Sally Mann

I'm a one-hundred-percent, made-in-Florida, dope-smugglin', time-sharin', spring-breakin', log-flumin', double-occupancy discount vacation. I'm a tall glass of orange juice and a day without sunshine. I'm the wind in your sails, the sun on your burn and the moon over Miami. I am the native. ~ Tim Dorsey

There was a man of double deed,
Who sowed his garden full of seed;
When the seed began to grow,
'Twas like a garden full of snow;
When the snow began to melt,
'Twas like a ship without a belt;
When the ship began to sail,
'Twas like a bird without a tail;
When the bird began to fly,
'Twas like an eagle in the sky;
When the sky began to roar,
'Twas like a lion at my door;
When my door began to crack,
'Twas like a stick across my back;
When my back began to smart,
'Twas like a penknife in my heart;
And when my heart began to bleed,
'Twas death, and death, and death indeed. ~ Anonymous

Whilst I could not think of any man whose spirit was, or needed to be, more enlarged than the spirit of a genuine merchant. What a thing it is to see the order which prevails throughout his business! By means of this he can at any time survey the general whole, without needing to perplex himself in the details. What advantages does he derive from the system of book-keeping by double entry? It is among the finest inventions of the human mind; every prudent master of a house should introduce it into his economy. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The more I thought about Jocelyn's theory, the less bizarre it seemed. Yes, there were things about it that were absolutely cuckoo - Mrs Chang's Mexican double and so forth - but still, overall the idea was not without its merits. It made a strange sort of sense to me, on an intuitive, metaphorical level. Being in here - going crazy - it did feel like your life had been hijacked in some inexplicable way. It did feel like a parallel universe, separated from the real one by only the flimsiest of partitions. ~ Gavin Extence

Well, Mimi Mackson, tell me what you like to bake."
"Lots of things- brownies, cookies, pies, tarts, scones. But cupcakes are my favorite. I like to flavor them with unusual spices and herbs."
"I see. And what's the last thing that you made?"
"Double-chocolate brownies with cinnamon and cayenne, to welcome someone home."
"And prior to that?"
"Cheddar-chive biscuits."
She waved her hand in front of her face like she smelled something bad. "No, no, my word, that will not do at all. Just sweet things, please." She stood and paced behind the desk. "Ha! Cheese and chives! I wouldn't dream of baking, eating, or even serving those, not to win the world."
Well, that was strange. Sweet isn't sweet without savory. One isn't good without the other- I thought everyone knew that. Even the most sugary dessert needs a dash of salt.
Mrs. T sat again. "So tell me then, young Mimi. The best sweet thing you've ever, ever made?"
"Hmm... lemon-lavender cupcakes, I guess. To celebrate friendship. ~ Rajani LaRocca

We also have to give up the notion of a divine savior, which has nothing to do with what religion we belong to, but refers to the idea of someone or something who will save us without our having to go through any pain. In fact, giving up that kind of false hope is the first step. We have to be with ourselves. We have to be real people. There is no way of beating around the bush, hoping for the best. If you are really interested in working with yourself, you can't lead that kind of double life, adopting ideas, techniques, and concepts of all kinds, simply in order to get away from yourself. ~ Chogyam Trungpa

When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can't run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn't fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag ... As for the types of comments I make, sometimes I just, By God, get carried away with my own eloquence. ~ George S. Patton

Definitely, some will doubt you, but don't doubt yourself. Surely, some will hate your mission, but don't hate your vision. Truly, some will envy your vision, but don't change your vision. Surely, some will mock at your direction, but don't neglect your focus. Surely, you shall meet obstacles, but learn to overcome all obstacles with wit. Frankly, some will say what they want to you, but say what is inspiring to yourself. Obviously, you shall meet fear, but learn to shake your fears. In fact, there shall be moment of drought, but learn to go with tenacity and an indomitable staying power. You may meet the rocks, but climb the rocks with fortitude to the apex, and you shall feel the fresh air! Truly, you shall hear so many things, but know what to listen to. Surely, some will misunderstand you, but learn to understand yourself. You may definitely have so many things to do, but mind what is more important and weightier. There is no great journey without issues, but learn to overcome all issues, and get to the end of the journey with distinctive footprints and a good sense of fulfillment. You were born for a purpose! Live it; achieve it! God is waiting for you at the finishing line; get there with a pleasant story for a glory! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Daughters of the attitude that produced them, certain women will not appeal to us without the double bed in which we find peace by their side, while others, to be caressed with a more secret intention, require leaves blown by the wind, water rippling in the dark, things as light and fleeting as they are. ~ Marcel Proust

A false mind is false in everything, just as a cross eye always looks askant. But one may err once, nay, a hundred times, without being double-minded. There can never be mental duplicity where there is sincerity. ~ Joseph Joubert

Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spirit beings. But that's not the way of Christ. Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly. You don't need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him. When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything. 11-15 Entering into this fullness ~ Eugene H. Peterson

Fawcett also shared with me a passion for words and we would trawl the dictionary together and simply howl and wriggle with delight at the existence of such splendours as 'strobile' and 'magniloquent', daring and double-daring each other to use them to masters in lessons without giggling. 'Strobile' was a tricky one to insert naturally into conversation, since it means a kind of fir-cone, but magniloquent I did manage.

I, being I, went always that little bit too far of course. There was one master who had berated me in a lesson for some tautology or other. He, as what human being wouldn't when confronted with a lippy verbal show-off like me, delighted in seizing on opportunities to put me down. He was not, however, an English teacher, nor was he necessarily the brightest man in the world.

'So, Fry. "A lemon yellow colour" is precipitated in your test tube is it? I think you will find, Fry, that we all know that lemons are yellow and that yellow is a colour. Try not to use thee words where one will do. Hm?'

I smarted under this, but got my revenge a week or so later.

'Well, Fry? It's a simple enough question. What is titration?'

'Well, sir…, it's a process whereby…'

'Come on, come on. Either you know or you don't.'

'Sorry sir, I am anxious to avoid pleonasm, but I think…'

'Anxious to avoid what?'

'Pleonasm, sir.'

'And what do you mean by that?'

'I'm sorry, s ~ Stephen Fry

If you want to know the real reasons why certain politicians vote the way they do - follow the money. Arch Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg (a.k.a. JackOff Grease-Smug) stands to make billions via his investment firm - Somerset Capital Management - if the UK crashes unceremoniously out of the European Union without a secure future trade deal. Why ? Because proposed EU regulations will give enforcement agencies greater powers to curb the activities adopted by the sort of off-shore tax havens his company employs. Consequently the British electorate get swindled not once, but twice. Firstly because any sort of Brexit - whether hard, soft, or half-baked - will make every man, woman and child in the UK that much poorer than under the status quo currently enjoyed as a fully paid up member of the EU. Secondly because Rees-Mogg's company, if not brought to heel by appropriate EU wide legislation, will deprive Her Majesty's Treasury of millions in taxes, thus leading to more onerous taxes for the rest of us. It begs the question, who else in the obscure but influential European Research Group (ERG) that he chairs and the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) that he subscribes to, have similar vested interests in a no-deal Brexit ? It is high time for infinitely greater parliamentary and public scrutiny into the UK Register of Members' Financial Interests in order to put an end to these nefarious dealings and appalling double standards in public life which only serve to further corrode public ~ Alex Morritt

In other parts of the world, they have double-bed sheets," wrote Wilbur Larch in A Brief History of St. Cloud's. "Here in St. Cloud's we do without - we just do without. ~ John Irving

I once knew of a girl whose story forms the substance of the diary. Whether he has seduced others I do not know ... we learn of his desire for something altogether arbitrary. With the help of his mental gifts he knew how to tempt a girl to draw her to him without caring to possess her in any stricter sense.
I can imagine him able to bring a girl to the point where he was sure she would sacrifice all then he would leave without a word let a lone a declaration a promise.
The unhappy girl would retain the consciousness of it with double bitterness because there was not the slightest thing she could appeal to. She could only be constantly tossed about in a terrible witches' dance at one moment reproaching herself forgiving him at another reproaching him and then since the relationship would only have been actual in a figurative sense she would constantly have to contend with the doubt that the whole thing might only have been an imagination. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

The British ministry can read that name without spectacles; let them double their reward. ~ John Hancock

Oh Mickey, it was wonderful, it was fun - the whole kitten and kaboozle. It was like living. And to be denied that whole part would be a great loss. You gave it to me. You gave me a double life. I couldn't have endured with just one."
I'm proud of you and your double life."
All I regret", she said, crying again, crying with him, the two of them in tears..."is that we couldn't sleep together too many nights. To commingle with you. Commingle?"
Why not."
I wish tonight you could spend the night."
I do, too. But I'll be here tomorrow night."
I meant it up at the Grotto. I didn't want to fuck any more men even without the cancer. I wouldn't do that even if I was alive."
You are alive. It is here and now. It's tonight. You're alive."
I wouldn't do it. You're the one I always loved fucking. But I don't regret that I have fucked many. It would have been a great loss to have had otherwise. Some of them, they were sort of wasted times. You must have that, too. Haven't you? With women you didn't enjoy?"
Yes."
Yes, I had experiences where the men would just want to fuck you whether they cared about you or not. That was always harder for me. I give my heart, I give my self, in my fucking."
You do indeed."

And then, after just a little drifting, she fell asleep and so he went home - "I'm leaving now" - and within two hours she threw a clot and was dead.
So those were her last words, in English anyway. I give my heart, I ~ Philip Roth

Much like his birth, Cole's first hunting experience was a little more traumatic. He was give years old and we were getting ready to have our Christmas party at Phil's house in 2002. Because we hunt on private land, we're allowed to shoot deer from our vehicles. Cole and I climbed into my truck right before dark, and I drove next to the woods. As I was explaining safety and other things about hunting to him, a deer walked right into the middle of a trail. We hadn't been there for five minutes before the deer showed up! I looked at Cole and pointed toward the front of the truck.
Without saying anything, I leaned my gun out the driver's-side window of my truck and shot the deer. The deer did a double backflip and hit the ground. I looked at Cole and his mouth was wide open. I could have picked his jaw up from the floorboard.
"That's how you do it, son," I told him.
Cole didn't say anything. I figured his ears were still ringing, and I instantly regretted not telling him to cover them. It ended up being a pretty traumatic experience for him, and I feared he'd never want to go hunting again. In hindsight, he might have been a little too young to witness something like that. ~ Jase Robertson

In comparison, young unmarried women in America were fortunate: They had a certain measure of sexual freedom. Eighteenth-century parents allowed their daughters to spend tie with suitors unsupervised, and courting couples openly engaged in "bundling," the practice of sleeping together without undressing, in the girls' homes. (Theoretically, that is, they were sleeping together without undressing: in fact, premarital pregnancy boomed during the period of 1750 to 1780, when bundling was nearly universal.) But by the turn of the century, in a complete reversal of previous beliefs about women's sexuality, the idea took hold that only men were carnal creatures; women were thought to be passionless and therefore morally superior. ~ Leora Tanenbaum

The good folk of Twitter were extremely helpful when I needed to double-check how much blackjacks and fruit salad sweets cost in the 1960s. Without them I might have written my book twice as fast. ~ Neil Gaiman

And instead you rolled a rock over me and turned your back. I spent all that time drowning and surfacing in you, over and over and over, and all because in the end you could not bear to do the one thing I asked you to do. I wanted you to use me, you malign, double-crossing, corpse-obsessed bag of bones, you broken, used-up shithead! I wanted you to live and not die, you imaginary-girlfriend-having asshole! Fuck one flesh, one end, Harrow. I already gave my flesh to you, and I already gave you my end. I gave you my sword. I gave you myself. I did it while knowing I'd do it all again, without hesitation, because all I ever wanted you to do was eat me. ~ Tamsyn Muir

Shukhov ate his supper without bread
a double portion and bread on top of it would be too rich. So he'd save the bread. You get no thanks from your belly
it always forgets what you've just done for it and comes begging again the next day. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

We could live at the present day without a Plato, but a double number of Newtons is required to discover the secrets of nature, and to bring life into harmony with the laws of nature. ~ Dmitri Mendeleev

You're not the only one in this relationship who loves a
challenge," he says. "And just so you know for the future, I like my double-chocolate chip
cookies warm and soft in the middle ... and without magnets glued to them. ~ Simone Elkeles

I have no idea how long Quisser was gone from the table. My attention became fully absorbed by the other faces in the club and the deep anxiety they betrayed to me, an anxiety that was not of the natural, existential sort but one that was caused by peculiar concerns of an uncanny nature. What a season is upon us, these faces seemed to say. And no doubt their voices would have spoken directly of certain peculiar concerns had they not been intimidated into weird equivocations and double entendres by the fear of falling victim to the same kind of unnatural affliction that had made so much trouble in the mind of the art critic Stuart Quisser. Who would be next? What could a person say these days, or even think, without feeling the dread of repercussion from powerfully connected groups and individuals? I could almost hear their voices asking, "Why here, why now?" But of course they could have just as easily been asking, "Why not here, why not now?" It would not occur to this crowd that there were no special rules involved; it would not occur to them, even though they were a crowd of imaginative artists, that the whole thing was simply a matter of random, purposeless terror that converged upon a particular place at a particular time for no particular reason. On the other hand, it would also not have occurred to them that they might have wished it all upon themselves, that they might have had a hand in bringing certain powerful forces and connections into our district simply by wish ~ Thomas Ligotti

He flipped her on her back and she squeaked.
"I want to see you." And he kissed her, tasting like darkest sin, like double chocolate without insulin, like pure malt whisky injected into her bloodstream. ~ Toni Anderson

The traffic increased when I reached the village, and when I walked into the market square I saw a large crowd gathered at one end. For a few moments I stood uncertainly, wondering whether I ought to leave or find out what the crowd was gathered for.
Suddenly they parted, and without warning two soldiers in brown and green rode side by side straight at me. Dropping my gaze to my dusty feet, I pressed back with the rest of the people on the road near me, and listened with intense relief as their horses cantered by without pausing.
The decision as to whether I should try to find out what was going on was settled for me when the crowd around me surged forward, and a man somewhere behind me called, "Hi, there! Molk! What's toward?"
"Search," a tall, bearded man said, turning. Around me people muttered questions and comments as he added, "That Countess causing all the problems up-mountain. Milord Commander Debegri has taken over the search, and he thinks she might end up this far south."
"Reward?" a woman's shrill voice called from somewhere to the left.
"Promised sixty in pure gold."
"Where from?" someone else yelled. "If it's Debegri, I wouldn't count no gold 'less I had it in hand, and then I'd test it."
This caused a brief, loud uproar of reaction, then the bearded man bellowed, "The King! Sixty for information that proves true. Double that for a body. Preferably alive, though they don't say by how much."
Some laughed, but there was an u ~ Sherwood Smith

Whoever, therefore, thinks that he understands the divine scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build on the double love of God and of our neighbor does not understand it at all. Thus a man supported by faith, hope, and charity, with an unshaken hold upon them does not need the scriptures ... And many live by these three things in solitude without books. ~ Saint Augustine

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforth in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The aficionado, or lover of the bullfight, may be said, broadly, then, to be one who has this sense of the tragedy and ritual of the fight so that the minor aspects are not important except as they relate to the whole. Either you have this or you have not, just as, without implying any comparison, you have or have not an ear for music. Without an ear for music the principle impression of an auditor at a symphony concert might be of the motions of the players of the double bass, just as the spectator at the bullfight might remember only the obvious grotesqueness of a picador. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Jenk shook his head as he headed for the rental car counter. He felt his shoulders tightening as he walked away, certain that Izzy wasn't quite ready to be silent or invisible yet. He was halfway there when Izzy shouted, "Jenkins! I wish I could quit yew!"
Of course. The obligatory Brokeback Mountain reference. Jenk flipped Zanella a double bird without bothering to look back. ~ Suzanne Brockmann

There can have been no doubt in Eleanor's mind as to what was expected of her as a wife. In her day, women were supposed to be chaste both inside and outside marriage, virginity and celibacy being highly prized states. When it came to fornication, women were usually apportioned the blame, because they were the descendants of Eve, who had tempted Adam in the Garden of Eden, with such dire consequences. Women, the Church taught, were the weaker vessel, the gateway to the Devil, and therefore the source of all lechery. St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote: "To live with a woman without danger is more difficult than raising the dead to life." Noblewomen, he felt, were the most dangerous so fall. Women were therefore kept firmly in their place in order to prevent them from luring men away from the paths of righteousness.

Promiscuity--and its often inevitable consequence, illicit pregnancy--brought great shame upon a woman and her family, and was punishable by fines, social ostracism, and even, in the case of aristocratic and royal women, execution. Unmarried women who indulged in fornication devalued themselves on the marriage market. In England, women who were sexually experienced were not permitted to accuse men of rape in the King's court. Female adultery was seen as a particularly serious offence, since it jeopardized the laws of inheritance.

Men, however, often indulged in casual sex and adultery with impunity. Because the virtue of high-born women was jealo ~ Alison Weir

One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. ~ Winston S. Churchill

And just so you know for the future, I like my double-chocolate chip cookies warm and soft in the middle ... and without magnets glued to them."
"Me, too. When you decide to bake me some, let me know. ~ Simone Elkeles

I cross-examined him and he double-crossed me but that's fine; I'll prosecute him one day and he'll be sentenced to life without parole…with me. ~ Natalya Vorobyova

There is also the less-well-known double standard of testing for steroids and other strength-enhancing drugs. "Because they think women can't get hard and muscular without drugs - which is wrong, some women can - " Bev said, "they started by testing all the contestants at every Olympia. Then they substituted random testing, which means you can be tested at any time during the year, without warning. But it's only for the women. The men, they don't test. They did it one year, and everyone looked so crappy they stopped it. ~ Gloria Steinem

When we are needy Christ does His best work, but be warned. Someone, maybe even some well-meaning soul, is going to tell you, "Don't worry. God will never give you more than you can handle."
I double-dog-dare you to find that in the scriptures. The closest you can come is found in 1 Corinthians 10:13: "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it."
This talks about an escape from temptation; it does not say that you will not be faced with more than you can handle. The mother whose baby is born and dies, the father who loses his eyesight in a construction accident and can no longer provide for his family, the child who hurries home from school every day hoping that his mother hasn't yet succumbed to the cancer that he sees ravish her body day by day . . . all of these souls have more than they can handle - on their own.
But with Christ as their companion on the journey through life - and only with Christ - all things are possible. Without Him, we fail no matter how far we manage on our own. We can never cross over without Christ and His all-access Atonement. ~ Toni Sorenson

What was I thinking?" Chiron cried. " I can't let you get away without this."
He pulled a pen from his coat pocket. It was an ordinary disposable ballpoint, black ink, removable cap. Probably thirty cents.
Gee," I said. "Thanks."
Percy, that's a gift from your father. I've kept it for years, not knowing you were who I was waiting for. But the profecy is clear to me now. You are the one.
I remembered the feild trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, when I'd vaporized Mrs. Dodds. Chiron had thrown me a pen that turned into a sword. Could this be...?
I took off the cap, and the pen grew longer and heavier in my hand. In half a second, I held a shimmering bronze sword with a double-edged blade, a leather=wrapped grip, and a flat hilt riveted with gold studs. It was the first weapon that actually felt balanced in my hands.
The sword has a long and tragic history that we need not go into," Chiron told me. "It's name is Anaklusmos."
Riptide," I translated, surprised the Ancient Greek came so easily.
Use it only for emergencies" Chiron said, "and only against monsters No hero should harm mortals unless absolutely, of course, but this sword wouldn't harm them in any case. ~ Rick Riordan

I had worked my way through a thousand problems, like when the tar paper bulged on the corners so I used a strap wrapped around the whole house and ratcheted it tight to attach the trim; I had figured that out without using a book, and that was just one of a bunch of ideas that had saved the day. I liked it; I was falling in love with the way my kneecaps knew how to hold a piece of plywood halfway up till I could grab the underside with my hand. I like the way the little house was taking shape, and the way it seemed to double-dog dare me to step in... move in. ~ Dee Williams

In this climate of profoundly disrupted relationships the child faces a formidable developmental task. She must find a way to form primary attachments to caretakers who are either dangerous or, from her perspective, negligent. She must find a way to develop a sense of basic trust and safely with caretakers who are untrustworthy and unsafe. She must develop a sense of self in relation to others who are helpless, uncaring or cruel. She must develop a capacity for bodily self-regulation in an environinent in which her body is at the disposal of others' needs as well as a capacity for self-soothing in an environment without solace. She must develop the capacity for initiative in an environment which demands that she bring her will into complete conformity with that of her abuser. And ultimately, she must develop a capacity for intimacy out of an environment where all intimate relationships are corrupt, and an identity out of an environment which defines her as a whore and a slave. ~ Judith Lewis Herman

A writer has a use for his experiences that most civilians simply don't; he or she discerns material in situations that others simply live through. Perhaps there are some who disapprove of this, but without this double consciousness, literature would not get made at all. ~ Walter Kirn

Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of
humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one
can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah for long without
overcoming this double exclusion - without transposing the enemy from the
sphere of the monstrous ... into the sphere of shared humanity and herself from
the sphere of proud innocence into the sphere of common sinfulness. When
one knows [as the cross demonstrates] that the torturer will not eternally
triumph over the victim, one is free to rediscover that person's humanity and
imitate God's love for him. And when one knows [as the cross demonstrates]
that God's love is greater than all sin, one is free to see oneself in the light of
God's justice and so rediscover one's own sinfulness. ~ Miroslav Volf

Why do you consult [women's] words when it is not their mouths that speak? Consult their eyes, their colour, their breathing, their timid manner, their slight resistance, that is the language nature gave them for your answer. The lips always say 'No,' and rightly so; but the tone is not always the same, and that cannot lie. Has not a woman the same needs as a man, but without the same right to make them known? Her fate would be too cruel if she had no language in which to express her legitimate desires except the words which she dare not utter. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau