Desdemona Quotes

Isn't there something in living dangerously?' There's a great deal in it,' the Controller replied. 'Men and women must have their adrenals stimulated from time to time.' What?' questioned the Savage, uncomprehending. It's one of the conditions of perfect health. That's why we've made the V.P.S. treatments compulsory.' V.P.S.?' Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenin. It's the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconvenience.' But I like the inconveniences.' We don't,' said the Controller. 'We prefer to do things comfortably.' But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.' In fact,' said Mustapha Mond, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy. Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer, the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.' There was a long silence. I claim them all,' said the Savage at last. Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. 'You're welcome,' he said.

willow trees, willow trees they remind me of Desdemona I'm so damned literary and at the same time the waters rushing past remind me of nothing

Her stare fixed me. Without rancour and without regret; without triumph and without evil; as Desdemona once looked back on Venice. On the incomprehension, the baffled rage of Venice. I had taken myself to be in some way the traitor Iago punished, in an unwritten sixth act. Chained in hell. But I was also Venice; the state left behind; the thing journeyed from.

Juliet singles out Romeo. Desdemona claims Othello. They have no doubts, the young, no fear, no pride.

I do not think there is a demonstrative proof (like Euclid) of Christianity, nor of the existence of matter, nor of the good will and honesty of my best and oldest friends. I think all three are (except perhaps the second) far more probable than the alternatives. The case for Christianity in general is well given by Chesterton…As to why God doesn't make it demonstratively clear; are we sure that He is even interested in the kind of Theism which would be a compelled logical assent to a conclusive argument? Are we interested in it in personal matters? I demand from my friend trust in my good faith which is certain without demonstrative proof. It wouldn't be confidence at all if he waited for rigorous proof. Hang it all, the very fairy-tales embody the truth. Othello believed in Desdemona's innocence when it was proved: but that was too late. Lear believed in Cordelia's love when it was proved: but that was too late. 'His praise is lost who stays till all commend.' The magnanimity, the generosity which will trust on a reasonable probability, is required of us. But supposing one believed and was wrong after all? Why, then you would have paid the universe a compliment it doesn't deserve. Your error would even so be more interesting and important than the reality. And yet how could that be? How could an idiotic universe have produced creatures whose mere dreams are so much stronger, better, subtler than itself?

In those days you could identify a person's nationality by smell. Lying on her back with eyes closed, Desdemona could detect the telltale oniony aroma of a Hungarian woman on her right, and the raw-meat smell of an Armenian on her left. (And they, in turn, could peg Desdemona as a Hellene by her aroma of garlic and yogurt.)

Your old tutor did you a great disservice, Mr. Kynaston. He taught you how to speak, and swoon, and toss your head but he never taught you how to suffer like a woman, or love like a woman. He trapped a man in a woman's form and left you there to die! I always hated you as Desdemona. You never fought! You just died, beautifully. No woman would die like that, no matter how much she loved him. A woman would fight!

You're worse than evil. You're inefficient.

She that was ever fair and never proud, Had tongue at will and yet was never loud, Never lack'd gold and yet went never gay, Fled from her wish and yet said 'Now I may,' She that being anger'd, her revenge being nigh, Bade her wrong stay and her displeasure fly, She that in wisdom never was so frail To change the cod's head for the salmon's tail; She that could think and ne'er disclose her mind, See suitors following and not look behind, She was a wight, if ever such wight were,-- DESDEMONA: To do what? IAGO: To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.

That’s how they do it, these girls! Othello charmed Desdemona by telling her stories, but, oh, didn’t Desdemona charm Othello by the way she listened?

It indicates a deep confusion of thinking to mistake one's own discomfort for a benefit to another.

Adam leaned down and placed his lips next to her ear. He blew gently on it before he spoke. Mona leaned even closer into him as she listened intently to his words. "Desdemona." She moaned at the sound of her name on his lips. "I need to tell you something." His words were accompanied by warm air caressing her skin. "Before my time is done, I will watch the light fade from your eyes as you are sent to the hell you so deserve." Though his words promised destruction, the cadence of his voice still held her in a seductive rapture.

He stopped. She heard the intake of his breath. “You are my country, Desdemona.” Yearning, harsh and poignant and she felt herself swaying toward him. “My Egypt. My hot, harrowing desert and my cool, verdant Nile, infinitely lovely and unfathomable and sustaining.” She gasped. His gaze fell, shielded by his lashes. An odd, half-mocking smile played about his lips. “You’ll never hear old Blake say something like that.” She swallowed, unable to speak, her senses abraded by his stimulating words, her pulse hammering in anticipation? Trepidation? “Remember my words next time he calls you a bloody English rose.

am Desdemona. I am Alannah. I am Ivo, and I am Bayr. I am the daughters of the clans, and the keepers of the temple. I am Alba’s mother, and Dagmar’s friend.” Her voice broke on Dagmar’s name, but she pressed on. “I am everyone you have wronged. And I am Ghost, the new Highest Keeper.

I hope my noble lord esteems me honest. OTHELLO: Oh, ay, as summer flies are in the shambles, That quicken even with blowing. O thou weed, Who art so lovely fair and smell’st so sweet That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne'er been born! DESDEMONA: Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed? OTHELLO: Was this fair paper, this most goodly book, Made to write “whore” upon?

Jen smiled at them, a wicked gleam in her eyes. "Do you hear that, Desdemona, last of the witches? I have so named you! Hear me now," Jen yelled into the dark forest, the wind and thunder still rolling around her. "Your time is drawing near! We are coming. Throw back your head in your tiny victory, laugh at our short-lived defeat, but we are coming. The night will be filled with our howls, the ground will shake with the stomping of our feet! We are coming. We are coming for you, Desdemona, and death follows!" Jen lifted her head and let out a howl worthy of an Alpha female. The others joined. And as their howls died down, for a brief moment before the silence took over, they heard howls beyond the earthly realm, howls filled with grief and triumph, pain and fear, anger and love-howls from those caught in the jaws of the In Between. They had heard their females' cries and they had answered.

Desdemona, mourning her parents, was still imprisoned by the past. And so she stood on the mountain, looking down at the emancipated city, and felt cheated by her ability to feel happy by everybody else.

Lefty, who'd been observing all the ways Greece had been handed down to America, arrived now at where the transmission stopped. In other words: the future. He stepped off to meet it. Desdemona, having no alternative, followed.

And that was just how it worked, wasn’t it? Happiness handed around and around, never stopping. It wasn’t something one could hoard tight like a miser. That would be like trying to hold one’s breath for later.

Yippie ki-yay and all that shit" - Desdemona Fox

Not Cassio kill'd! then murder's out of tune, And sweet revenge grows harsh. DESDEMONA O, falsely, falsely murder'd!

It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” ― Lewis Carroll.

This to hear Would Desdemona seriously incline: But still the house-affairs would draw her thence: Which ever as she could with haste dispatch, She'ld come again, and with a greedy ear Devour up my discourse: which I observing, Took once a pliant hour, and found good means To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart That I would all my pilgrimage dilate, Whereof by parcels she had something heard, But not intentively: I did consent, And often did beguile her of her tears, When I did speak of some distressful stroke That my youth suffer'd. My story being done, She gave me for my pains a world of sighs: She swore, in faith, twas strange, 'twas passing strange, 'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful: She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd That heaven had made her such a man: she thank'd me, And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her, I should but teach him how to tell my story. And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake: She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd, And I loved her that she did pity them. This only is the witchcraft I have used: Here comes the lady; let her witness it.

How hard could husbanding be? Don’t drink, don’t gamble, don’t bring hunting dogs to the table. Don’t be terrified of tooth-drawers. Don’t be stupid about money. Don’t go for a soldier. No hitting girls. He wasn’t drawn to violate any of these prohibitions. Assuming older sisters weren’t classified as girls. Maybe make that, No hitting girls first.

Pen wanted to ask if becoming a sorcerer made a man more, or less, attractive as a husband, but he had an uneasy feeling that he could guess.

One gives you the shirt off his back, mused Des, and the other offers to help you bury bodies. I do believe you have made some new friends, Pen!

I should also mention, with the vestigial pang of a once flat-chested girl, Desdemona's voluptuous figure.

Come, Desdemona, I have but an hour Of love, of worldly matters and directions To spend with thee. We must obey the time.

Something I did not know at twenty,” said Nikys slowly, “that I do know at thirty, is that when a woman marries a man, she marries his life. And it had better be the life she wants to lead.

Desdemona oli tottunut näkemään heidän siamilaisvarjonsa iltaisin vasten valkeaksi kalkittua talonseinää, ja aina kohdatessaan vain oman varjonsa hänestä tuntui kuin se olisi halkaistu kahtia.

You looked a god in the eyes and bore witness for me, by which alone I am preserved.” She took a deep breath, through his mouth. “You looked a god in the eyes. And spoke for me. There is nothing in my power that I will ever refuse you, after that.

How am I, then, a villain To counsel Cassio to this parallel course, Directly to his good? Divinity of hell! When devils will the blackest sins put on, They do suggest at first with heavenly shows, As I do now: for whiles this honest fool Plies Desdemona to repair his fortune, And she for him pleads strongly to the Moor, I’ll pour this pestilence into his ear,— That she repeals him for her body’s lust; And by how much she strives to do him good, She shall undo her credit with the Moor. So will I turn her virtue into pitch; And out of her own goodness make the net That shall enmesh them all.

God me such uses send, Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend.

If you don’t understand something, you should just try to learn more, that’s all.

Are you saying a sorcerer could burst into flames?” “Mm, no, the body is too wet for that. He would more just . . . burst. Like a grilled sausage splitting its casing.

I’d have been a fool not to have thought of it, and a greater fool not to have thought better of it.

We will be judged by how well we love.

Just once, Pen thought glumly, he’d like to get an answer to prayers, instead of being delivered as one.

The gods do not save us from death.  They only catch us when we fall from life.

The gods have no hands in this world but ours.  If we fail Them, where then can They turn?

Beloved, god-touched, great-souled… a saint, even?  The true sort, who moved through the world as silently as fishes, unnoticed by carnal eyes that focused only on outward domination and display.  Never on a small woman in a small town, being kind.  Soul by soul.

O, she was foul!— I scarce did know you, uncle; there lies your niece, Whose breath, indeed, these hands have newly stopp'd: I know this act shows horrible and grim. GRATIANO Poor Desdemona! I am glad thy father's dead: Thy match was mortal to him, and pure grief Shore his old thread in twain: did he live now, This sight would make him do a desperate turn, Yea, curse his better angel from his side, And fall to reprobance. OTHELLO 'Tis pitiful; but yet Iago knows That she with Cassio hath

Another day will put some other plate on your table, more to your taste, but do not waste the food in front of you.

But a name is a thing of the air, of the mind and the spirit, so a fellow could give it to a spirit, right?

You plug that into the wall and you need to rename it the Vibratron 5000.

His further study of humanity had revealed just how much people could convince themselves that their own needs were those of the gods, and not the other way around.

We cannot protect anyone from being alive, Master Bosha. No matter how much we might wish to.

My melancholy thoughts are back. But I still love the idea of love.

Well, he’s his god’s problem now. Don’t promote your troubles beyond your rank.” “That is actually theologically sound advice.

Othello’s error is also an example of how preconceptions can bias a lie catcher’s judgments. Othello is convinced before this scene that Desdemona is unfaithful.

Kathy was currently rehearsing Desdemona in Othello hadn’t escaped me.

I love you, Desdemona.” “I know,” she whispered. “You don’t have to say the words.” He smiled slowly. “Trust me, you’re going to hear them every day for the rest of our lives.

Lefty and Desdemona’s cousin, Sourmelina, had gone to America and was living now in a place called Detroit. Built

Glad you like my first tableau. Come and see number two. Hope it isn't spoilt; it was very pretty just now. This is 'Othello telling his adventures to Desdemona'." The second window framed a very picturesque group of three. Mr March in an armchair, with Bess on a cushion at his feed, was listening to Dan, who, leaning against a pillow, was talking with unusual animation. The old man was in shadow, but little Desdemona was looking up with the moonlight full upon her face, quite absorbed in the story he was telling so well. The gay drapery over Dan's shoulder, his dark colouring and the gesture of his arm made the picture very striking and both very striking, and both spectators enjoyed it with silent pleasure, till Mrs Jo said in a quick whisper: "I'm glad he's going away. He's too picturesque to have among so many romantic girls. Afraid his 'grand, gloomy and peculiar' style will be too much for our simple maids.

It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will. Come, be a man: drown thyself! drown cats and blind puppies. I have professed me thy friend, and I confess me knit to thy deserving with cables of perdurable toughness; I could never better stead thee than now. Put money in thy purse; follow thou the wars; defeat thy favour with an usurped beard; I say, put money in thy purse. It cannot be that Desdemona should long continue her love to the Moor,—put money in thy purse,—nor he his to her: it was a violent commencement, and thou shalt see an answerable sequestration;—put but money in thy purse.—These Moors are changeable in their wills:—fill thy purse with money: the food that to him now is as luscious as locusts shall be to him shortly as acerb as the coloquintida. She must change for youth: when she is sated with his body, she will find the error of her choice: she must have change, she must: therefore put money in thy purse.—If thou wilt needs damn thyself, do it a more delicate way than drowning. Make all the money thou canst; if sanctimony and a frail vow betwixt an erring barbarian and a supersubtle Venetian be not too hard for my wits and all the tribe of hell, thou shalt enjoy her; therefore make money. A pox of drowning thyself! it is clean out of the way: seek thou rather to be hanged in compassing thy joy than to be drowned and go without her.

…as she peered distrustfully over the rail of my crib, she saw my face—and blood intervened. Desdemona’s worried expression hovered above my (similarly) perplexed one. Her mournful eyes gazed down at my (equally) large black orbs. Everything about us was the same. And so she picked me up and I did what grandchildren are supposed to do: I erased the years between us. I gave Desdemona back her original skin.

Come, how wouldst thou praise me? IAGO I am about it; but indeed my invention Comes from my pate as birdlime does from frieze; It plucks out brains and all: but my Muse labours, And thus she is deliver'd. If she be fair and wise, fairness and wit, The one's for use, the other useth it. DESDEMONA Well praised! How if she be black and witty? IAGO If she be black, and thereto have a wit, She'll find a white that shall her blackness fit. DESDEMONA Worse and worse. EMILIA How if fair and foolish? IAGO She never yet was foolish that was fair; For even her folly help'd her to an heir. DESDEMONA These are old fond paradoxes to make fools laugh i' the alehouse. What miserable praise hast thou for her that's foul and foolish? IAGO There's none so foul and foolish thereunto, But does foul pranks which fair and wise ones do.

As for Iago’s jealousy, one cannot believe that a seriously jealous man could behave towards his wife as Iago behaves towards Emilia, for the wife of a jealous husband is the first person to suffer. Not only is the relation of Iago and Emilia, as we see it on stage, without emotional tension, but also Emilia openly refers to a rumor of her infidelity as something already disposed of. Some such squire it was That turned your wit, the seamy side without And made you to suspect me with the Moor. At one point Iago states that, in order to revenge himself on Othello, he will not rest till he is even with him, wife for wife, but, in the play, no attempt at Desdemona’s seduction is made. Iago does not encourage Cassio to make one, and he even prevents Roderigo from getting anywhere near her. Finally, one who seriously desires personal revenge desires to reveal himself. The revenger’s greatest satisfaction is to be able to tell his victim to his face – "You thought you were all-powerful and untouchable and could injure me with impunity. Now you see that you were wrong. Perhaps you have forgotten what you did; let me have the pleasure of reminding you." When at the end of the play, Othello asks Iago in bewilderment why he has thus ensnared his soul and body, if his real motive were revenge for having been cuckolded or unjustly denied promotion, he could have said so, instead of refusing to explain.

Or in my grandparents's case, the circling worked like this: as they paced around the deck the first time, Lefty and Desdemona were still brother and sister. The second time, the were bride and bridegroom. And the third, they were husband and wife.

Everybody must pity Desdemona, but I cannot bring myself to like her. Her determination to marry Othello – it was she who virtually did the proposing – seems the romantic crush of a silly schoolgirl rather than a mature affection; it is Othello’s adventures, so unlike the civilian life she knows, which captivate her rather than Othello as a person. He may not have practiced witchcraft, but, in fact, she is spellbound. Then, she seems more aware than is agreeable of the honor she has done Othello by becoming his wife. […] Before Cassio speaks to her, she has already discussed him with her husband and learned that he is to be reinstated as soon as it is opportune. A sensible wife would have told Cassio this and left matters alone. In continuing to badger Othello, she betrays a desire to prove to herself and to Cassio that she can make her husband do as she pleases. […] Though her relationship with Cassio is perfectly innocent, one cannot but share Iago’s doubts as to the durability of the marriage. It is worth noting that, in the willow-song scene with Emilia, she speaks with admiration of Ludovico and then turns to the topic of adultery. Of course, she discusses this in general terms and is shocked by Emilia’s attitude, but she does discuss the subject and she does listen to what Emilia has to say about husbands and wives. It is as if she had suddenly realized that she had made a mésalliance and that the sort of man she ought to have married was someone of her own class and color like Ludovico. Given a few more years of Othello and of Emilia’s influence and she might well, one feels, have taken a lover.

It was still years before Desdemona, cutting cucumbers, would lean against the corner of the kitchen table and, without realizing it, would lean in a little harder, and after that would find herself taking up that position every day, the table corner snug between her legs.

Then I saw the keyboard of an organ which filled one whole side of the walls. On the desk was a music-book covered with red notes. I asked leave to look at it and read, ‘Don Juan Triumphant.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, 'I compose sometimes.’ I began that work twenty years ago. When I have finished, I shall take it away with me in that coffin and never wake up again.’ 'You must work at it as seldom as you can,’ I said. He replied, 'I sometimes work at it for fourteen days and nights together, during which I live on music only, and then I rest for years at a time.’ 'Will you play me something out of your Don Juan Triumphant?’ I asked, thinking to please him. 'You must never ask me that,’ he said, in a gloomy voice. 'I will play you Mozart, if you like, which will only make you weep; but my Don Juan, Christine, burns; and yet he is not struck by fire from Heaven.’ Thereupon we returned to the drawing-room. I noticed that there was no mirror in the whole apartment. I was going to remark upon this, but Erik had already sat down to the piano. He said, 'You see, Christine, there is some music that is so terrible that it consumes all those who approach it. Fortunately, you have not come to that music yet, for you would lose all your pretty coloring and nobody would know you when you returned to Paris. Let us sing something from the Opera, Christine Daae.’ He spoke these last words as though he were flinging an insult at me.” “What did you do?” “I had no time to think about the meaning he put into his words. We at once began the duet in Othello and already the catastrophe was upon us. I sang Desdemona with a despair, a terror which I had never displayed before. As for him, his voice thundered forth his revengeful soul at every note. Love, jealousy, hatred, burst out around us in harrowing cries. Erik’s black mask made me think of the natural mask of the Moor of Venice. He was Othello himself. Suddenly, I felt a need to see beneath the mask. I wanted to know the FACE of the voice, and, with a movement which I was utterly unable to control, swiftly my fingers tore away the mask. Oh, horror, horror, horror!” Christine stopped, at the thought of the vision that had scared her, while the echoes of the night, which had repeated the name of Erik, now thrice moaned the cry: “Horror! … Horror! … Horror!

I didn’t want to say anything but last night I went and snacked on Elias again…” “Don’t call your food by its name,” Frost said, shaking his head. “And you know the rule.” “No kisses for twenty-four hours after I’ve eaten a person,” Desdemona said despondently while hanging her head. “I know.

We know now that most birth deformities result from the consanguinity of the parents.” “From the what?” asked Desdemona. “From families intermarrying.” Desdemona went white. “Causes all kinds of problems. Imbecility. Hemophilia. Look at the Romanovs. Look at any royal family. Mutants, all of them.

Her hands started to reach out, but then retreated behind her back and consoled each other there. “I am so sorry. But surely you see any girl must be quite afraid to marry a man who could set her on fire with a word!” He’d dreamed of setting her alight with kisses. “Any man could set a girl on fire with a torch, but he’d have to be deranged!

Don’t promote your troubles beyond your rank.

I don’t know how to read.” “Ah. Well, we can fix that, too.” Otta wasn’t sure if that was a promise or a threat.

To use the machineries of justice to commit injustice is the deepest offense to the Father of Winter.” He

Love he hates, hatred he loves! Iago, the Mephistopheles!

Fear is easy.  Joy is hard, said Des. Mm.

He fantasized about burning his fraying vestments when he finally reached home.

an unattended loom could wait. An unattended child would not.

The five theological purposes of prayer, I was taught, are service, supplication, gratitude, divination, and atonement.

Once, carefully, they rode around a company of marching pike men, recruits on their way to being exported to other lords’ wars. Like Drovo, Pen thought. He wondered how many would ever march home. Better it seemed to export cheese or cloth, but it was true that fortunes were made in the military trade. Though seldom by the soldiers, any more than by the cheeses.

Lefty had seen Desdemona undress many times, but usually as no more than a shadow and never in moonlight. She had never curled onto her back like this, lifting her feet to take off her shoes. He watched and, as she pulled down her skirt and lifted her tunic, was struck by how different his sister looked, in moonlight, in a lifeboat. She glowed. She gave off white light. He blinked behind his hands. The moonlight kept rising; it covered his neck, it reached his eyes until he understood: Desdemona was wearing a corset. That was the other thing she'd brought along: the white cloth enfolding her silkworm eggs was nothing other than Desdemona's wedding corset. She thought she'd never wear it, but here it was. Brassiere cups pointed up at the canvas roof. Whalebone slats squeezed her waist. The corset's skirt dropped garters attached to nothing because my grandmother owned no stockings. In the lifeboat, the corset absorbed all available moonlight, with the odd result that Desdemona's face, head, and arms disappeared. She looked like Winged Victory, tumbled on her back, being carted off to a conqueror's museum. All that was missing was the wings.

So, to recap: Sourmelina Zizmo (née Papadiamandopoulos) wasn’t only my first cousin twice removed. She was also my grandmother. My father was his own mother’s (and father’s) nephew. In addition to being my grandparents, Desdemona and Lefty were my great-aunt and -uncle. My parents would be my second cousins once removed and Chapter Eleven would be my third cousin as well as my brother.

People write tragedies in which fatal blondes betray their paramours to ruin, which Cressidas, Cleopatras, Delilahs, and sometimes even naughty daughters like Jessica bring their lovers or their parents to distress: but these are not the heart of tragedy. They are fripperies to the soul of man. What does it matter if Antony did fall upon his sword? It only killed him. It is the mother's not the lover's lust that rots the mind. It is that which condemns the tragic character to his walking death. It is Jocasta, not Juliet, who dwells in the inner chamber. It is Gertrude, not the silly Ophelia, who sends Hamlet to his madness. The heart of tragedy does not lie in stealing or taking away. Any featherpated girl can steal a heart. It lies in giving, in putting on, in adding, in smothering without pillows. Desdemona robbed of life or honour is nothing to a Mordred, robbed of himself--his soul stolen, overlaid, wizened, while the mother-character lives in triumph, superfluously and with stifling love endowed on him, seemingly innocent of ill-intention. Mordred was the only son of Orkney who never married. He, while his brothers fled to England, was the one who stayed alone with her for twenty years--her living larder. Now that she was dead, he had become her grave. She existed in him like the vampire. When he moved, when he blew his nose, he did it with her movement. When he acted he became as unreal as she had been, pretending to be a virgin for the unicorn. He dabbled in the same cruel magic. He had even begun to keep lap dogs like her--although he had always hated hers with the same bitter jealousy as that with which he had hated her lovers.

He wondered how many would ever march home. Better it seemed to export cheese or cloth, but it was true that fortunes were made in the military trade. Though seldom by the soldiers, any more than by the cheeses.

I need thinking time to tidy up for my Guest,” he explained. “He can’t walk into a house when it’s so full you can’t get the door open.” Which was the most succinct description of holy meditation Pen had yet encountered

Although even then, it hadn’t been because he hadn’t wanted to learn—just that he hadn’t wanted to learn what had been set on the plate in front of him that day.  The power to select his own plates had changed everything.

Charges to the chapterhouse. He wondered how the comptroller would classify the bill. Miscellaneous, perhaps, or did she keep a file for Espionage? By now, said Des dryly, she likely just has a file labeled “Penric, Don’t Bother Asking.

If we divide human attributes into "masculine" and "feminine" and strengthen only those attributes that "belong" to that sex, we cut off half of ourselves from ourselves as human beings, condemned forever to search for our other half. The world is in desperate need of multilayered human beings with the voices, stamina, and insight to break through our current calcified ways of doing things, (...) The patriarchal structures of honor, shame, violence, and might is right, do as much harm to Hamlet, Edgar, Lear, and Coriolanus as they do to Ophelia, Desdemona, Lady Macduff (...) (...) To have feelings, intuitive flights of understanding, a desire to have knowledge of what is happening below the surface, to serve. These are often called "feminine" attributes, and it is true that many women in the plays possess them. But they also belong to Kent, Ferdinand, Florizel, Camillo, as well as the women. So they are not "feminine" attributes: they are human attributes.

Where's Pip? I want to see Pip. Produce Pip!"—"What's the row, my lord?"—"Shakspeare's an infernal humbug, Pip! What's the good of Shakspeare, Pip? I never read him. What the devil is it all about, Pip? There's a lot of feet in Shakspeare's verse, but there an't any legs worth mentioning in Shakspeare's plays, are there, Pip? Juliet, Desdemona, Lady Macbeth, and all the rest of 'em, whatever their names are, might as well have no legs at all, for anything the audience know about it, Pip. Why, in that respect they're all Miss Biffins to the audience, Pip. I'll tell you what it is. What the people call dramatic poetry is a collection of sermons. Do I go to the theatre to be lectured? No, Pip. If I wanted that, I'd go to church. What's the legitimate object of the drama, Pip? Human nature. What are legs? Human nature. Then let us have plenty of leg pieces, Pip, and I'll stand by you, my buck!" and I am proud to say,' added Pip, 'that he did stand by me, handsomely.

Downstairs, entertaining company, Desdemona heard her son’s clarinet and, as if orchestrating a harmony, let out a long sigh. For the last forty-five minutes Gus and Georgia Vasilakis and their daughter Gaia had been sitting in the living room. It was Sunday afternoon. On the coffee table a dish of rose jelly reflected light from the sparkling glasses of wine the adults were drinking. Gaia nursed a glass of lukewarm Vernor’s ginger ale. An open tin of butter cookies sat on the table.

The demon settled like a dog cowering before a stern master, and no wonder; it had been a dog, or rather been in a dog, at one time, Pen was certain. The new-hatched elemental had found its early way through lesser animals before that, maybe, but mostly it was doggish.

The boxlike room, stripped of all embellishment or parlor fussiness, a room that wished to be timeless or ahistorical, and there, in the middle of it, my deeply historical, timeworn grandmother. Everything about Middlesex spoke of forgetting and everything about Desdemona made plain the inescapability of remembering. Against her heap of pillows she lay, exuding woe vapors, but in a kindly way. That was the signature of my grandmother and the Greek ladies of her generation: the kindliness of their despair. How they moaned while offering you sweets!

A doctrinal point Pen had constantly to explain to people trying to pray for good weather or no earthquakes, who never listened, he’d finally decided, because they didn’t want it to be so.  The gods did not control the weather.  Or the world.  Or souls. But death, oh, they own that.

I need to make organzine from these. They’re not strong enough.” Lefty didn’t believe this. Desdemona’s silk was always the best. He knew that he was supposed to shout, to act offended, to pretend to take his business elsewhere. But he had gotten such a late start; the closing bell was about to sound. His father had always told him not to bring cocoons late in the day because then you had to sell them at a discount. Lefty’s skin prickled under his new suit. He wanted the transaction to be over. He was filled with embarrassment: embarrassment for the human race, its preoccupation with money, its love of swindle.

Desdemona had always loved her brother as only a sister growing up on a mountain could love a brother: he was the whole entertainment, her best friend and confidant, her co-discoverer of short cuts and monks' cells. Early on, the emotional sympathy she'd felt with Lefty had been so absolute that she'd sometimes forgotten that they were separate people. As kids they'd scrabbled down the terraced mountainside like a four-legged, two-headed creature. She was accustomed to their Siamese shadow springing up against the whitewashed house at evening, and whenever she encountered her solitary outline, it seemed cut in half.

He’d tried for me twice. Three times, if what you say is true. I decided not to give him a fourth chance.” “Oh.” Penric sank back, signing himself. “I regret… not doing better with him.” “Well, he’s his god’s problem now. Don’t promote your troubles beyond your rank.” “That is actually theologically sound advice.

. . . As I sit here in my Aeron chair, thinking E. O. Wilson thoughts. Was it love or reproduction? Chance or destiny? Crime or nature at work? Maybe the gene contained an override, ensuring its expression, which would explain Desdemona’s tears and Lefty’s taste in prostitutes; not fondness, not emotional sympathy; only the need for this new thing to enter the world and hence the heart’s rigged game. But I can’t explain it, any more than Desdemona or Lefty could have, any more than each one of us, falling in love, can separate the hormonal from what feels divine, and maybe I cling to the God business out of some altruism hard-wired to preserve the species;

Pen woke aroused, rolled over sleepily, and reached for himself. The room seemed warm and dim and safe and quiet. His hand had barely touched its target when his mouth commented, “Ooh, I’ve not felt it from this angle before. This should be interesting.” Pen’s hand froze. “Don’t stop on our account,” said Desdemona. “Physicians, remember?” “Yes, don’t be shy. I’ve seen a thousand of ’em.” “Speak for yourself!” “Well, I’ve certainly diapered them a thousand times.” Pen had no idea what the next comment was, and it might just have been the language, but it certainly sounded obscene. He rolled from the bed and dressed as fast as possible. He couldn’t be out on the road soon enough.

Victoria Pappas stood half in and half out of the light, the shading across her body exactly that of the photograph on page 8 of Lingerie Parisienne. Desdemona (costume lady, stage manager, and director all in one) had pinned up Victoria’s hair, letting ringlets fall over her forehead and warning her to keep her biggish nose in shadow. Perfumed, depilated, moist with emollients, wearing kohl around her eyes, Victoria let Lefty look upon her. She felt the heat of his gaze, heard his heavy breathing, heard him try to speak twice—small squeaks from a dry throat—and then she heard his feet coming toward her, and she turned, making the face Desdemona had taught her; but she was so distracted by the effort to pout her lips like the French lingerie model that she didn’t realize the footsteps weren’t approaching but retreating; and she turned to see that Lefty Stephanides, the only eligible bachelor in town, had taken off . . .

Desdemona watched them spinning cocoons, moving their heads as though to music. As she watched, she forgot about the world outside, its changes and convulsions, its terrible new music (which is about to be sung in a moment). Instead she heard her mother, Euphrosyne Stephanides, speaking in this very cocoonery years ago, elucidating the mysteries of silkworms—“To have good silk, you have to be pure,” she used to tell her daughter. “The silkworms know everything. You can always tell what somebody is up to by the way their silk looks”—and so on, Euphrosyne giving examples—“Maria Poulos, who’s always lifting her skirt for everyone? Have you seen her cocoons? A stain for every man. You should look next time”—Desdemona only eleven or twelve and believing every word, so that now, as a young woman of twenty-one, she still couldn’t entirely disbelieve her mother’s morality tales, and examined the cocoon constellations for a sign of her own impurity (the dreams she’d been having!).

. . . and only as she leads him up the stairs does a voice in his head point out how this girl comes up to exactly where . . . and isn’t her profile just like . . . but now they’ve reached the room with its unclean sheets, its blood-colored oil lamp, its smell of rose water and dirty feet. In the intoxication of his young senses Lefty doesn’t pay attention to the growing similarities the girl’s disrobing reveals. His eyes take in the large breasts, the slim waist, the hair cascading down to the defenseless coccyx; but Lefty doesn’t make connections. The girl fills a hookah for him. Soon he drifts off, no longer hearing the voice in his head. In the soft hashish dream of the ensuing hours, he loses sense of who he is and who he’s with. The limbs of the prostitute become those of another woman. A few times he calls out a name, but by then he is too stoned to notice. Only later, showing him out, does the girl bring him back to reality. “By the way, I’m Irini. We don’t have a Desdemona here.

[Talking about Othello] His dying words are about the service he has done to the state -not what he has done to Desdemona. (...) He acknowledges not love but the power structure (...). Othello believes his fellow officer [Iago] rather than his wife, believes death is suitable punishment for infidelity (...). It makes me uneasy that we so easily state that Othello is a play about race. Race is one of its ingredients, but the most pervasive subject that Shakespeare is tackling is sexism. The two women [Desdemona and Emilia, Iago's wife] end up dead. Bianca, the third woman in the play, Cassio's mistress, ends up in jail for something she never did, and nobody bothers to get her out. Iago, the symbol of evil, remains alive. Brabantio, Desdemona's father, dies of a broken heart because of his daughter's disobedience. And everyone is very regretful about what has happened. But no one, other than Emilia, has pointed out that there is a terrible double standard, something rotten in the system itself.

In the late summer of 1922, my grandmother Desdemona Stephanides wasn’t predicting births but deaths, specifically, her own. She was in her silkworm cocoonery, high on the slope of Mount Olympus in Asia Minor, when her heart, without warning, missed a beat. It was a distinct sensation: she felt her heart stop and squeeze into a ball. Then, as she stiffened, it began to race, thumping against her ribs. She let out a small, astonished cry. Her twenty thousand silkworms, sensitive to human emotion, stopped spinning cocoons. Squinting in the dim light, my grandmother looked down to see the front of her tunic visibly fluttering; and in that instant, as she recognized the insurrection inside her, Desdemona became what she’d remain for the rest of her life: a sick person imprisoned in a healthy body. Nevertheless, unable to believe in her own endurance, despite her already quieting heart, she stepped out of the cocoonery to take a last look at the world she wouldn’t be leaving for another fifty-eight years.

The gods, Pen was reminded yet again, didn’t value people by the same measures people did.  The great-souled and the great saints weren’t found only among great men, or even very often so.  Of course, the humble were more numerous to start with.  Would it be possible to do some sort of holy head-count, and determine if blessedness was evenly distributed?  Maybe not; the high were much better recorded than the low.  Maybe no merely human eyes were fit to see why the god had so valued this daughter of His.

But the fire dodges him and races up into the house. From there it sweeps across an Oriental rug, marches out to the back porch, leaps nimbly up onto a laundry line, and tightrope-walks across to the house behind. It climbs in the window and pauses, as if shocked by its good fortune: because everything in this house is just made to burn, too— the damask sofa with its long fringe, the mahogany end tables and chintz lampshades. The heat pulls down wallpaper in sheets; and this is happening not only in this apartment but in ten or fifteen others, then twenty or twentyfive, each house setting fire to its neighbor until entire blocks are burning. The smell of things burning that aren’t meant to burn wafts across the city: shoe polish, rat poison, toothpaste, piano strings, hernia trusses, baby cribs, Indian clubs. And hair and skin. By this time, hair and skin. On the quay, Lefty and Desdemona stand up along with everyone else, with people too stunned to react, or still half asleep, or sick with typhus and cholera, or exhausted beyond caring.

She is innocent! Why is it so easy to believe she would betray him?” I was truly appalled. Samuel looked up at me calmly and replied, “Because it’s always easier to believe the worst.” I looked at him in disbelief. “It is not!” I sputtered. “I can’t believe you would say that! Wouldn’t you give the benefit of the doubt to someone you claimed to love?” The ease in which Othello accepted her betrayal was completely foreign to me. “And why would Othello believe Iago over Desdemona? I don’t care how honest they think Iago is! Emilia even told Othello she thought he was being manipulated and tricked!” Samuel sighed and tried to read to the end of the scene. I jumped in again. I couldn’t help it. My sense of outrage was on overdrive. “But he said, ‘I loved not wisely, but too well!’” I was dismayed. “He had it totally backwards! He did love wisely-she was worthy of his love…she was a wise choice! But he didn’t love well enough! If he had loved Desdemona more, trusted her more, Iago wouldn’t have been able to divide them.” I longed once again for Jane Eyre, where righteousness and principle won out in the end. Jane got her man, and she did it with style. Desdemona got her man, and he smothered her.