I've always been fascinated by accounts of seemingly 'normal' people who have committed horrendous acts of cruelty and violence. You hear it on the news all the time.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The impulse to cruelty is, in many people, almost as violent as the impulse to sexual love - almost as violent and much more mischievous.
Given appropriate social conditions, decent, ordinary people can be led to do extraordinarily cruel things.
Psychoanalysts believe that the only 'normal' people are those who cause no trouble either to themselves or anyone else.
Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable.
In the name of noble purposes men have committed unspeakable acts of cruelty against one another.
I was motivated to write about violence because I believe it's not unusual. I see it as just a part of life, and I think we get in trouble when we separate people who've experienced it from those who haven't.
Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities.
I shy away from showing cruelty on the page. A lot of the violence in my books actually happens off stage. The police come on to the scene after the event has occurred.
In a serious struggle there is no worse cruelty than to be magnanimous at an inopportune time.
Cruelty is all out of ignorance. If you knew what was in store for you, you wouldn't hurt anybody, because whatever you do comes back much more forceful than you send it out.
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