Joanne Greenberg

He was a man of tempers and now he needed a rage that was cleansing, simple, and direct. But the anger here was so laced with pity, fear, and love that he did not know how he could free himself of it.

There came a great exhaustion and when the doctor said, “Is there anything you want to tell me?” a great gust of anger, so that Deborah stood up quickly and said to her and to Yr and to the Collect and to the Censor, “All right—you’ll ask me questions and I’ll answer them—you’ll clear up my …symptoms’ and send me home … and what will I have then?”

The doctor said quietly, “If you did not really want to give them up, you wouldn’t tell me.” A rope of fear pulled its noose about Deborah. “Come, sit down. You will not have to give up anything until you are ready, and then there will be something to take its place.”

For many years words had come out of her mouth for which her mind could not remember giving the order. Sometimes only a feeling would sweep over her. The feeling would be given voice, but the logic behind it, by which the world might have been convinced, remained mute, and so she lost faith in her own desires. It made her defend them all the more blindly.