Drunk and Sober

“His adultery with Bathsheba, and his murder of Uriah, were the two great twin sins of his life, but one of the things that made the murder of Uriah so grotesque was the fact that Uriah was Hittite, doggedly loyal to David. Even when David got him drunk to help cover up his sin, Uriah stayed true to his cause—and in that moment, better to be Uriah drunk than David sober.”

American Milk and Honey, pp. 104-105

The Whole Class Watching

“The Jews were the chosen nation, not in the sense of election to Heaven, but in the sense of a chosen pupil, selected to come to the front to show the rest of the class how the problem was to be solved. When that student does well, he is blessed. He is the class hero. When he messes up, he messes up in front of everybody. But the whole class is always involved.”

American Milk and Honey, p. 98

A Bloody Crew

“They are carnal, of the flesh, worldly. They are of their father the devil. And the number that belongs in this category is too great to itemize, although we can mention a few—Caiaphas and his crew, Tomas de Torquemada, Saul before his conversion, Bloody Mary, numerous medieval managers of pogroms, Himmler as the architect of the Final Solution, the incipient totalitarianism of Herbert Marcuse and his doctrine of repressive tolerance, and of course, Stalin. There is a long chain of other names, but to mention them all would soon become morbid.”

American Milk and Honey, p. 87