There is something fascinating about what moral suffering can do to someone who is in no obvious way a weak or feeble person. It's more insidious even than what physical illness can do, because there is no morphine drip or spinal block or radical surgery to alleviate it. Once you're in its grip, it's as though it will have to kill you for you to be free of it. Its raw realism is like nothing else (12).
Just finished reading a gift (The Human Stain by Philip Roth) from a good friend. For whatever reason, I recorded a few passages I want to remember. Here's the opening of the novel (from Oedipus The King):
OEDIPUS: What is the rite of purification? How shall it be done?
CREON: By banishing a man, or expiation of blood by blood...