Passive Voice Quotes

No. No!” he says. “I . . .” He looks wildly around the room. For inspiration? For divine intervention? I don’t know. “You can’t go. Ana, I love you!” “I love you, too, Christian, it’s just—” “No . . . no!” he says in desperation and puts both hands on his head. “Christian . . .” “No,” he breathes, his eyes wide with panic, and suddenly he drops to his knees in front of me, head bowed, long-fingered hands spread out on his thighs. He takes a deep breath and doesn’t move. What? “Christian, what are you doing?” He continues to stare down, not looking at me. “Christian! What are you doing?” My voice is high-pitched. He doesn’t move. “Christian, look at me!” I command in panic. His head sweeps up without hesitation, and he regards me passively with his cool gray gaze—he’s almost serene . . . expectant. Holy Fuck . . . Christian. The submissive.

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out always cut it out. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

There is such a thing as the poetry of a mistake, and when you say, "Mistakes were made," you deprive an action of its poetry, and you sound like a weasel.

Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. And don't start a sentence with a conjugation.

Strunk and White don’t speculate as to why so many writers are attracted to passive verbs, but I’m willing to; I think timid writers like them for the same reason timid lovers like passive partners. The passive voice is safe.

...passive voice is better than writing out a humongous number and taking the risk that your readers' brains will be numb by the time they get to the verb.

Would have. Could have. Should have. This is the language of condemnation underscored by the passivity of regret. It’s a dead language. The thing is, you can’t un-sin. You can only repent.

Not long ago, I advertised for perverse rules of grammar, along the lines of "Remember to never split an infinitive" and "The passive voice should never be used." The notion of making a mistake while laying down rules ("Thimk," "We Never Make Misteaks") is highly unoriginal, and it turns out that English teachers have been circulating lists of fumblerules for years. As owner of the world's largest collection, and with thanks to scores of readers, let me pass along a bunch of these never-say-neverisms: * Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read. * Don't use no double negatives. * Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is appropriate; and never where it isn't. * Reserve the apostrophe for it's proper use and omit it when its not needed. * Do not put statements in the negative form. * Verbs has to agree with their subjects. * No sentence fragments. * Proofread carefully to see if you any words out. * Avoid commas, that are not necessary. * If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. * A writer must not shift your point of view. * Eschew dialect, irregardless. * And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. * Don't overuse exclamation marks!!! * Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents. * Writers should always hyphenate between syllables and avoid un-necessary hyph-ens. * Write all adverbial forms correct. * Don't use contractions in formal writing. * Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided. * It is incumbent on us to avoid archaisms. * If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. * Steer clear of incorrect forms of verbs that have snuck in the language. * Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixed metaphors. * Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. * Never, ever use repetitive redundancies. * Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing. * If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, resist hyperbole. * Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration. * Don't string too many prepositional phrases together unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. * Always pick on the correct idiom. * "Avoid overuse of 'quotation "marks."'" * The adverb always follows the verb. * Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives." (New York Times, November 4, 1979; later also published in book form)

Her voice was matter-of-fact. Loyal, songs called her later. Faithful and true and prudent. Such passive, pale words for what she was.

We still (sometimes) remember that we cannot be free if our minds and voices are controlled by someone else. But we have neglected to understand that we cannot be free if our food and its sources are controlled by someone else. The condition of the passive consumer of food is not a democratic condition. One reason to eat responsibly is to live free. (pg. 323, The Pleasures of Eating)

A self-destructive man feels completely alienated, utterly alone. He's an outsider to the human community. He thinks to himself, "I must be insane." What he fails to realize is that society has, just as he does, a vested interest in considerable losses and catastrophes. These wars, famines, floods and quakes meet well-defined needs. Man wants chaos. In fact, he has to have it. Depression, strife, riots, murder - all this dread. We're irresistibly drawn to that almost orgiastic state created out of death and destruction. It's in all of us. We revel in it. Sure, the media tries to put a sad face on these things and paints them up as great human tragedies. But we all know the function of the media has never been to eliminate the evils of the world - no! Their job is to persuade us to accept those evils and get used to living with them. The powers that be want us to be passive observers, and they haven't given us any other options outside the occasional, purely symbolic, participatory act of voting. "You want the puppet on the right or the puppet on the left?" I feel that the time has come to project my own inadequacies and dissatisfactions into the sociopolitical and scientific schemes, let my own lack of a voice be heard.

When a woman is passive, it is acceptable. However, when a woman speaks her mind and voices her opinion, that is a serious problem. A woman’s voice should count, but sadly, when a woman speaks, people hear only what they want to hear; the rest falls on deaf ears. When things do not work out as planned, a woman has to step up to the plate to fix the problem that she had a solution for in the first place.

Be as vigilantly on guard against translating such a sentence into the passive voice as you would against committing murder.

We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice — that is, until we have stopped saying “It got lost,” and say, “I lost it.

Women receive messages from childhood that they may be rewarded and protected for maintaining a childlike comportment such as being demure, obedient, passive and subservient.

Holmes had cultivated the ability to still the noise of the mind, by smoking his pipe and playing nontunes on the violin. He once compared this mental state with the sort of passive seeing that enables the eye, in a dim light or at a great distance, to grasp details with greater clarity by focusing slightly to one side of the object of interest. When active, strained vision only obscures and frustrates, looking away often permits the eyes to see and interpret the shapes of what it sees. Thus does inattention allow the mind to register the still, small whisper of the daughter of the voice.

...ugly interlopers threaten to choke off your story, depriving it of much-needed nutrition, sunlight and water. Identify and cut those weeds – the life-sucking adverbs, the shade-killing descriptions that don’t move the story forward, the crowding passive voice sentences.

It is a common belief that we breathe with our lungs alone, but in point of fact, the work of breathing is done by the whole body. The lungs play a passive role in the respiratory process. Their expansion is produced by an enlargement, mostly downward, of the thoracic cavity and they collapse when that cavity is reduced. Proper breathing involves the muscles of the head, neck, thorax, and abdomen. It can be shown that chronic tension in any part of the body's musculature interferes with the natural respiratory movements. Breathing is a rhythmic activity. Normally a person at rest makes approximately 16 to 17 respiratory incursions a minute. The rate is higher in infants and in states of excitation. It is lower in sleep and in depressed persons. The depth of the respiratory wave is another factor which varies with emotional states. Breathing becomes shallow when we are frightened or anxious. It deepens with relaxation, pleasure and sleep. But above all, it is the quality of the respiratory movements that determines whether breathing is pleasurable or not. With each breath a wave can be seen to ascend and descend through the body. The inspiratory wave begins deep in the abdomen with a backward movement of the pelvis. This allows the belly to expand outward. The wave then moves upward as the rest of the body expands. The head moves very slightly forward to suck in the air while the nostrils dilate or the mouth opens. The expiratory wave begins in the upper part of the body and moves downward: the head drops back, the chest and abdomen collapse, and the pelvis rocks forward. Breathing easily and fully is one of the basic pleasures of being alive. The pleasure is clearly experienced at the end of expiration when the descending wave fills the pelvis with a delicious sensation. In adults this sensation has a sexual quality, though it does not induce any genital feeling. The slight backward and forward movements of the pelvis, similar to the sexual movements, add to the pleasure. Though the rhythm of breathing is pronounced in the pelvic area, it is at the same time experienced by the total body as a feeling of fluidity, softness, lightness and excitement. The importance of breathing need hardly be stressed. It provides the oxygen for the metabolic processes; literally it supports the fires of life. But breath as "pneuma" is also the spirit or soul. We live in an ocean of air like fish in a body of water. By our breathing we are attuned to our atmosphere. If we inhibit our breathing we isolate ourselves from the medium in which we exist. In all Oriental and mystic philosophies, the breath holds the secret to the highest bliss. That is why breathing is the dominant factor in the practice of Yoga.

The use of the passive voice to disguise one’s role in the making of a decision is imprecise and obfuscatory. You’re a better adman than that. Active verbs! Why not say ‘I refuse to pay you fairly’?

In his essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell describes the relationship between language abuse and political abuse, how corrupt leaders use the passive voice to obscure unspeakable truths and shroud responsibility for their actions. They say, “It must be admitted, now that the report has been reviewed, that mistakes were made,” rather than, “I read the report, and I admit I made a mistake.” Here’s a life tool: always apologize in the active voice.

The following quote is from a Ted talk my sister sent to me that blew my mind.... We talk about how many women were raped last year, not about how many MEN raped women... We talk about how many girls in a school district were harassed last year, not about how many BOYS harassed girls... We talk about how many teenage girls got pregnant in the state of VA last year, rather than how many men and teenage boys got girls pregnant... So you can see how the use of this passive voice has a political affect. It shifts the focus (and blame) off men and boys, and onto girls and women.

Fights were recounted, battles won amid wars sure to be lost; hope was clung to; families were both celebrated and denounced; it was agreed that friends just didn't get it; tears were shed; comfort proffered.

Not long ago, I learned that if I let other people tell me how God was supposed to work in my life I would be dead. If I would have given into someone else’s version of God then I would have done nothing to improve my situation. The notion that “if it was meant to be, it will be”, is a pacifying, yet harmful quote, that many spiritualists use to soften the blow of anger. God is not passive. He is relentless, and he will build you through fire. He will put in your heart a need for answers. The intensity of what bothers your soul is often his voice trying to take you from the limited vision of mankind to the full view of the best life he would like to offer you. He is above any pastor, any bishop, any prophet, any church, any cleverly crafted sermon or multi-meaning verse. He is the master of his craft and the author of your forever. Inner peace is only found through action. Fear may darken the trail, but the light of peace stands at the end of such a journey ----waiting with truth.

The passive and overt violence waged against the women and children of the world must end.

She even tried to teach us the difference between active voice—“I snarfed the Oreos”—and passive voice—“The Oreos got snarfed.

Never use the passive voice. Do not say, 'It will get done.' Say, 'I'll do it,' and then stick to a solid, unwavering deadline

When you're a trans woman, you are made to walk this very fine line, where if you act feminine you are accused of being a parody, but if you act masculine, it is seen as a sign of your true male identity. And if you act sweet and demure, you're accused of reinforcing patriarchal ideals of female passivity, but if you stand up for your own rights and make your voice heard, then you are dismissed as wielding male privilege and entitlement.

She smiled, and said, “Take care that the voice of God and the Devil sound one in the same in the desert. Trust your instincts. You were not put on this earth to be naïve, blindly optimistic, or passive; you are here to be vigilant, to survive.

We talk about how many women were raped last year, not about how many men raped women. We talk about how many girls in a school district were harassed last year, not about how many boys harassed girls. We talk about how many teenaged girls got pregnant in the state of Vermont last year, rather than how many men and teenaged boys got girls pregnant. So you can see how the use of this passive voice has a political effect. It shifts the focus off men and boys and onto girls and women. Even the term violence against women is problematic. It's a passive construction. There's no active agent in the sentence. It's a bad thing that happens to women. It's a bad thing that happens to women, but when you look at that term violence against women, nobody is doing it to them. It just happens. Men aren't even a part of it! Jackson Katz, Ph.D., from his Ted talk "violence against women: it's a men's issue

Also, sometimes perhaps we stand by passively, waiting for God to fix the issues that He’s called us to fight in His strength. If we’re going to overcome the thoughts that hold us back, first we have to give up the hope that they’ll ever go away. Every second you spend wishing God would take away a struggle is a forfeited opportunity to overcome.

I learned how to argue. They called it ‘Debate’. I learned how to worship. I learned how to become an eager worker and a passive consumer. But I didn’t learn anything practical, like how to purify water, build a home, start a fire, grow food, or survive without the help of corporations.

Nature has many tricks wherewith she convinces man of his finity, - the ceaseless flow of the tides, the fury of storm, the shock of the earthquake, the long roll of heavens artillery, - but the most tremendous, the most stupefying of all, is the passive phase of the White Silence. All movement ceases, the sky clears, the heavens are as brass; the slightest whisper seems sacrilege, and man becomes timid, affrighted at the sound of his own voice. Sole speck of life journeying across the ghostly wastes of a dead world, he trembles at his audacity, realizes that his is a maggots life, nothing more. Strange thoughts arise unsummoned, and the mystery of all things strives for utterance. And the fear od death, of God, of the universe, comes over him, - the hope of the Resurrection and the life, the yearning for immortality, the vain striving of the imprisoned essence, - it is then, if ever, man walks alone with God. - The White Silence

That requires as much power as a small radio transmitter--and rather similar skills to operate. For it's the application of the power, not its amount, that matters. How long do you think Hitler's career as a dictator of Germany would have lasted, if wherever he went a voice was talking quietly in his ear? Or if a steady musical note, loud enough to drown all other sounds and to prevent sleep, filled his brain night and day? Nothing brutal, you appreciate. Yet, in the final analysis, just as irresistible as a tritium bomb.

Two pages of the passive voice—just about any business document ever written, in other words, not to mention reams of bad fiction—make me want to scream. It’s weak, it’s circuitous, and it’s frequently tortuous, as well. How about this: My first kiss will always be recalled by me as how my romance with Shayna was begun. Oh, man—who farted, right? A simpler way to express this idea—sweeter and more forceful, as well—might be this: My romance with Shayna began with our first kiss. I’ll never forget it. I’m not in love with this because it uses with twice in four words, but at least we’re out of that awful passive voice.

Rowan: What I said in the library, when we were dancing... I wasn't imagining anyone else. Neil: Yeah? Rowan: I really did have fun with you today. Neil: Was that so hard to admit? Rowan: God, you are so infuriating. Neil: But you like it. You like being infuriated. By me. Rowan: Passive voice? Westview taught you better than that. Neil: No. You did.

Modern consumer life is a form of extreme passive violence against all people.

We have been trained by a culture of violence and we are all agents of passive violence.

If you can append ‘by zombies’ to the end of a sentence (or, yes, ‘by the clown’), you’ve indeed written a sentence in the passive voice.

As you listen to political speech, notice those occasions when politicians and other leaders use the passive voice to avoid responsibility for problems and mistakes.

It would be difficult to sum up the status and conditions of Muslim in India better in two words than "Passive Voices".

The first sign that you've evolved as a writer is when MS WORD fails to make you feel guilty by putting a green line under your passive voice sentence

The offspring of nationalist thinking too often expresses itself in exclusionary and passively-violent legal policies, and then sadly, through militarism, which becomes manifest on the endless blood-soaked borders and battlefields of humanity's great failure as a humane species.

10 ways to raise a wild child. Not everyone wants to raise wild, free thinking children. But for those of you who do, here's my tips: 1. Create safe space for them to be outside for a least an hour a day. Preferable barefoot & muddy. 2. Provide them with toys made of natural materials. Silks, wood, wool, etc...Toys that encourage them to use their imagination. If you're looking for ideas, Google: 'Waldorf Toys'. Avoid noisy plastic toys. Yea, maybe they'll learn their alphabet from the talking toys, but at the expense of their own unique thoughts. Plastic toys that talk and iPads in cribs should be illegal. Seriously! 3. Limit screen time. If you think you can manage video game time and your kids will be the rare ones that don't get addicted, then go for it. I'm not that good so we just avoid them completely. There's no cable in our house and no video games. The result is that my kids like being outside cause it's boring inside...hah! Best plan ever! No kid is going to remember that great day of video games or TV. Send them outside! 4. Feed them foods that support life. Fluoride free water, GMO free organic foods, snacks free of harsh preservatives and refined sugars. Good oils that support healthy brain development. Eat to live! 5. Don't helicopter parent. Stay connected and tuned into their needs and safety, but don't hover. Kids like adults need space to roam and explore without the constant voice of an adult telling them what to do. Give them freedom! 6. Read to them. Kids don't do what they are told, they do what they see. If you're on your phone all the time, they will likely be doing the same thing some day. If you're reading, writing and creating your art (painting, cooking...whatever your art is) they will likely want to join you. It's like Emilie Buchwald said, "Children become readers in the laps of their parents (or guardians)." - it's so true! 7. Let them speak their truth. Don't assume that because they are young that you know more than them. They were born into a different time than you. Give them room to respectfully speak their mind and not feel like you're going to attack them. You'll be surprised what you might learn. 8. Freedom to learn. I realize that not everyone can homeschool, but damn, if you can, do it! Our current schools system is far from the best ever. Our kids deserve better. We simply can't expect our children to all learn the same things in the same way. Not every kid is the same. The current system does not support the unique gifts of our children. How can they with so many kids in one classroom. It's no fault of the teachers, they are doing the best they can. Too many kids and not enough parent involvement. If you send your kids to school and expect they are getting all they need, you are sadly mistaken. Don't let the public school system raise your kids, it's not their job, it's yours! 9. Skip the fear based parenting tactics. It may work short term. But the long term results will be devastating to the child's ability to be open and truthful with you. Children need guidance, but scaring them into listening is just lazy. Find new ways to get through to your kids. Be creative! 10. There's no perfect way to be a parent, but there's a million ways to be a good one. Just because every other parent is doing it, doesn't mean it's right for you and your child. Don't let other people's opinions and judgments influence how you're going to treat your kid. Be brave enough to question everything until you find what works for you. Don't be lazy! Fight your urge to be passive about the things that matter. Don't give up on your kid. This is the most important work you'll ever do. Give it everything you have.

Perhaps because I have spent hours sermonizing to students about the sins of the passive voice—how it can obfuscate meaning, deaden vitality, and abandon the task of assigning agency or responsibility—I find the grammar of justice maddening. It’s always “rendered,” “served,” or “done.” It always swoops down from on high—from God, from the state—like a bolt of lightning, a flaming sword come to separate the righteous from the wicked in Earth’s final hour. It is not, apparently, something we can give to one other, something we can make happen, something we can create together down here in the muck. The problem may also lie in the word itself, as for millennia “justice” has meant both “retribution” and “equality,” as if a gaping chasm did not separate the two. If you really want to know what justice is, don’t only ask questions and then score off anyone who answers, and refute him, roars Thrasymachus to Socrates in The Republic. You know very well that it is much easier to ask questions than to answer them. Give an answer yourself and tell us what you say justice is. When justice is done, writes Anne Carson, the world drops away. This does not seem to me a happy thought. I am not yet sure I want the world to drop away.

Feminist is not a passive label; it means speaking out and standing up for women everywhere, and also for yourself. One woman calling out an injustice is powerful enough; when we raise our voices together, we can shake the status quo to its foundation.

The following quote is from a Ted talk my sister sent to me that blew my mind.... We talk about how many women were raped last year, not about how many MEN raped women... We talk about how many girls in a school district were harassed last year, not about how many BOYS harassed girls... We talk about how many teenage girls got pregnant in the state of VA last year, rather than how many men and teenage boys got girls pregnant... So you can see how the use of this passive voice has a political affect. It shifts the focus off men and boys, and onto girls and women.

The adverb is not your friend. Adverbs, you will remember from your own version of Business English, are words that modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. They’re the ones that usually end in -ly. Adverbs, like the passive voice, seem to have been created with the timid writer in mind.

When someone says something petty or nasty, one of those little passive-aggressive things that would usually just pick at me for days, my new response is not to shut the door and bitch to anyone who will listen. Now? The moment they say it? “What did you mean by that?” I ask in a calm voice. It

The single problem plaguing all students in all schools everywhere is the crisis of disconnection. Meaningful Student Involvement happens when the roles of students are actively re-aligned from being the passive recipients of schools to becoming active partners throughout the educational process.

People hate these shows, but their hatred smacks of denial. It's all there, all the old American grotesques, the test-tube babies of Whitman and Poe, a great gauntlet of doubtless eyes, big mouths spewing fantastic catchphrase fountains of impenetrable self-justification, muttering dark prayers, calling on God to strike down those who would fuck with their money, their cash, and always knowing, always preaching. Using weird phrases that nobody uses, except everybody uses them now. Constantly talking about 'goals.' Throwing carbonic acid on our castmates because they used our special cup annd then calling our mom to say, in a baby voice, 'People don't get me here.' Walking around half-naked with a butcher knife behind our backs. Telling it like it is, y'all (what-what). And never passive-aggressive, no. Saying it straight to your face. But crying...My God, there have been more tears shed on reality TV than by all the war widows of the world. Are we so raw? It must be so. There are simply too many of them-too many shows and too many people on the shows-for them not to be revealing something endemic. This is us, a people of savage sentimentality, weeping and lifting weights.

Admittedly, man is small and insignificant in nature's scheme; but he is part of it. And are we to think less of the man who exposes himself to nature's forces than of him who just delights in looking at her, safe from dangers and tempests? Even those ridiculous earthworms know that an icicle can "sneeze"; but they have learned by obervation when and where it happens, and will do their best to avoid the danger with clear-eyes alertness and which they owe to their own daring. They are not deaf; they too hear the mighty voice of the mountains, but they understand and interpret it in a different way from those who enjoy it so passively and with such self-satisfaction.

Prefer the active voice unless there’s a good reason for using the passive

Young people must have their voices heard at all times. We cannot not be passive participants in the conversations about our future. We must get active and create the future the way we want it.

The happy passive nature, locked up with itself like a mirror in an airy room, reflects what goes on but demands not to be approached. A pact with life, a pact of immunity, appears to exist-But this pact is not respected for ever- a street accident, an overheard quarrel, a certain note in a voice, a face coming too close, a tree being blown down, someone's unjust fate- the peace tears right across.

The spelling in the honors essays was mostly correct, and the diction was clear (although my cautious college-bound don’t-take-a-chancers had an irritating tendency to fall back on the passive voice), but the writing was pallid. Boring. My honors kids were juniors—Mac Steadman, the department head, awarded the seniors to himself—but they wrote like little old men and little old ladies, all pursey-mouthed and ooo, don’t slip on that icy patch, Mildred.

Ashe was typical of that strata of mankind which conducts its human relationships according to a principle of challenge and response. Where there was softness, he would advance; where he found resistance, retreat. Having himself no particular opinions or tastes he relied upon whatever conformed with those of his companion. He was as ready to drink tea at Fortnum's as beer at the Prospect of Whitby; he would listen to military music in St. James's Park or jazz in Compton Street cellar; his voice would tremble with sympathy when he spoke of Sharpeville, or with indignation at the growth of Britain's colored population. To Leamas this observably passive role was repellent; it brought out the bully in him, so that he would lead the other gently into a position where he was committed, and then himself withdraw, so that Ashe was constantly scampering back from some cul-de-sac into which Leamas had enticed him.

All this said, there’s nothing wrong with sentences constructed in the passive voice – you’re simply choosing where you want to put the sentence’s emphasis – and I see nothing objectionable in, say, The floors were swept, the beds made, the rooms aired out. Since the point of interest is the cleanness of the house and not the identity of the cleaner. But many a sentence can be improved by putting its true protagonist at the beginning, so that’s something to be considered.fn10

He was too beautiful. Way more beautiful than me and way more beautiful than a beautiful woman. Have you met these men? His too beautiful voice and his beautiful hands and his beautiful cock. But the beauty went all haywire on the inside because he thought he was shit. And that thinking he was shit? It transformed him into the exact opposite of me - the most passive man on the planet. Particularly around any kind of high energy or conflict. Which was basically me, in the flesh.

Remember the balance; the give-and-take of energy. The symbol of yin and yang is more than the integration of male and female. It’s also the balance of light and dark, soft and hard, active and passive, in and out, giver and receiver. You can’t have one without the other.

What a waste of the essence of a man that he should never give enough of himself to any cause, that he should always hear that passive, cowardly voice uppermost which counts the cost and puts caution first. One would grow old and die with the power of one’s soul untasted.

I use “perpetrated” because it’s the kind of word that passive-voice writers are fond of. They prefer long words of Latin origin to short Anglo-Saxon words—which compounds their trouble and makes their sentences still more glutinous. Short is better than long. Of the 701 words in

Messrs. Strunk and White don’t speculate as to why so many writers are attracted to passive verbs, but I’m willing to; I think timid writers like them for the same reason timid lovers like passive partners. The passive voice is safe. There is no troublesome action to contend with; the subject just has to close its eyes and think of England, to paraphrase Queen Victoria. I think unsure writers also feel the passive voice somehow lends their work authority, perhaps even a quality of majesty. If you find instruction manuals and lawyers’ torts majestic, I guess it does.

My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules: (1) Avoid alliteration. Always (2) Prepositions are not words to end sentences with. (3) Avoid clichés like the plague. (They're old hat.) (4) Employ the vernacular. (5) Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc. (6) Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary. (7) It is wrong to ever split an infinitive. (8) Contractions aren't necessary. (9) Foreign words and phrases are not apropos. (10) One should never generalize. (11) Eliminate quotations. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." (12) Comparisons are as bad as clichés. (13) Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous. (14) Profanity sucks. (15) Be more or less specific. (16) Understatement is always best. (17) Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement. (18) One-word sentences? Eliminate. (19) Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake. (20) The passive voice is to be avoided. (21) Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms. (22) Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed. (23) Who needs rhetorical questions?

Let's press ahead a little further by sketching out a few variations among short shorts: ONE THRUST OF INCIDENT. (Examples: Paz, Mishima, Shalamov, Babel, W. C. Williams.) In these short shorts the time span is extremely brief, a few hours, maybe even a few minutes: Life is grasped in symbolic compression. One might say that these short shorts constitute epiphanies (climactic moments of high grace or realization) that have been tom out of their contexts. You have to supply the contexts yourself, since if the contexts were there, they'd no longer be short shorts. LIFE ROLLED UP. (Examples: Tolstoy's 'Alyosha the Pot,' Verga's 'The Wolf,' D. H. Lawrence's 'A Sick Collier.') In these you get the illusion of sustained narrative, since they deal with lives over an extended period of time; but actually these lives are so compressed into typicality and paradigm, the result seems very much like a single incident. Verga's 'Wolf' cannot but repeat her passions, Tolstoy's Alyosha his passivity. Themes of obsession work especially well in this kind of short short. SNAP-SHOT OR SINGLE FRAME. (Examples: Garda Marquez, Boll, Katherine Anne Porter.) In these we have no depicted event or incident, only an interior monologue or flow of memory. A voice speaks, as it were, into the air. A mind is revealed in cross-section - and the cut is rapid. One would guess that this is the hardest kind of short short to write: There are many pitfalls such as tiresome repetition, being locked into a single voice, etc. LIKE A FABLE. (Examples: Kafka, Keller, von Kleist, Tolstoy's 'Three Hermits.') Through its very concision, this kind of short short moves past realism. We are prodded into the fabulous, the strange, the spooky. To write this kind of fable-like short short, the writer needs a supreme self-confidence: The net of illusion can be cast only once. When we read such fable-like miniatures, we are prompted to speculate about significance, teased into shadowy parallels or semi allegories. There are also, however, some fables so beautifully complete (for instance Kafka's 'First Sorrow') that we find ourselves entirely content with the portrayed surface and may even take a certain pleasure in refusing interpretation. ("Introduction")

Let me tell you what really happened, the voice said. All those years you waited torpidly, like a sleepwalker, pulled and pushed about by others' opinions, by external pressure, by your illusions, by the official rules you internalized. You were misled by your own frustration and passivity, believing that what you were not allowed to have was what your heart was destined to embrace.

Ultimately, Roger learned only of the encounter with the urban bees. The boy remained thoroughly fascinated by what he heard nonetheless, his blue-eyed stare never once straying from Holmes; his visage passive and accepting, his eyes wide, Roger's pupils stated fixed on those venerable, reflective eyes, as though the boy were seeing distant lights shimmering along an opaque horizon, a glimpse of something flickering and alive existing beyond his reach. And, in turn, the gray eyes that focused sharply on him - piercing and kind at the same instant - endeavoured to bridge the lifetime that separated the two of them, attempting to do so as brandy was sipped, and the vial's glass grew warmer against soft palms, and that seasoned, well-lived voice somehow made Roger feel much older and more worldly than his years.

Some of the farm's work reached a level of granularity that stunned Lyudmilla. Two trolls would go on the comments sections of small' provincial newspapers and start chatting about the street they lived in, the weather, then caually recommend a piece about the nefarious West attacking Russia. No one who worked at the farm described themselves as trolls. Instead, they talked about their work in the passive voice ('a piece was written', 'a comment was made'). Most treated the farm as if it was just another job, doing the minimum required and then clocking off. Many of them seemed pleasant enough young people, with open, pretty faces, and yet they didn't blink when asked to smear, degrade, insult and humiliate their victims. The ease with which victims were attacked, the scale at which the farm operated, it all stunned Lyudmilla.

We know—if we’ve spent time with young children or remember ourselves at our best—that we’re not destined to be passive and compliant. We’re designed to be active and engaged. And we know that the richest experiences in our lives aren’t when we’re clamoring for validation from others, but when we’re listening to our own voice—doing something that matters, doing it well, and doing it in the service of a cause larger than ourselves.

We talk about how many women were raped last year, not about how many men raped women. We talk about how many girls in a school district were harassed last year, not about how many boys harassed girls. We talk about how many teenaged girls got pregnant in the state of Vermont last year, rather than how many men and teenaged boys got girls pregnant. So you can see how the use of this passive voice has a political effect. It shifts the focus off men and boys and onto girls and women. Even the term violence against women is problematic. It’s a passive construction. There’s no active agent in the sentence. It’s a bad thing that happens to women. It’s a bad thing that happens to women, but when you look at that term violence against women, nobody is doing it to them. It just happens. Men aren’t even a part of it! —JACKSON KATZ, PH.D., FROM HIS TED TALK “VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN: IT’S A MEN’S ISSUE

The greatest danger of not being in charge and waiting around until you are, is that you never learn to risk or fail and how to handle that experience. You never learn from those mistakes. Learn to recognize that low-level fear in you that says, “If you try and fail, you’ll get labeled as someone who can’t.” Learning to ignore that voice is crucial. So being aware of passivity is the first step, but step two is learning to reject it and take action.

Here is another grammatical point of interest: only transitive verbs have voice. Intransitive verbs cannot shift from active to passive, or from passive to active. No literary sleight of hand can hold someone else accountable for having sneezed your nose or arrived you late. Nor can anyone else do your dying, because die is an intransitive verb. You died. He died. She died. They died. Regardless of whether any of them were salvaged, it was the subject who did the dying, not the man with the gun. Death, in the end, disappears all voices.

Except in stock locutions, such as "You were paid yesterday," "The Germans were defeated," or "The project was abandoned," the passive voice is virtually useless in fiction except when used for comic effect, as when the writer mimics some fool's slightly pompous way of speaking or quotes some institutional directive. The active voice is almost invariably more direct and vivid: "Your parrot bit me" as opposed to "I was bitten by your parrot." ...Sentences beginning with infinite-verb phrases are so common in bad writing that one is wise to treat them as guilty until proven innocent, sentences, that is, that begin with such phrases as "Looking up slowly from her sewing, Martha said..." or "Carrying the duck in his left hand, Henry..." In really bad writing, such phrases lead to shifts in temporal focus or to plain illogic. The bad writer tells us, for instance: "Firing the hired man and burning down his shack, Eloise drove into town." (The sentence implies that the action of firing the hired man and burning down his shack and the action of driving into town are simultaneous.)

I believe in making my potential models comfortable,’ he explained when she shot a surprised look at him. ‘I’m considerate, unlike some artists who bend their sitters into difficult positions and expect them to stay there for hours. My demands are entirely reasonable.’ For a moment, her libido got interested in his demands. What would it be like to listen to the soft caress of his voice as he told her how he wanted her? To have those midnight-blue eyes roam over every inch of her body? To be passive, helpless, whilst he did whatever he pleased?

Women wouldn’t be afraid to leave their shitty marriages, because they’d be able to support themselves and their children alone. Women wouldn’t have to put up with all the crap they put up with from men, and compete against one another, and freak out about getting older, and deform themselves with Botox and fake tits and lip injections, because men have more money, and therefore more power, and ultimately more worth than women do. You’re the only loud, proud, unapologetic voice left telling women to stop being so fucking passive and take control of their lives. And

Depression demands that we reject simplistic answers, both 'religious' and 'scientific,' and learn to embrace mystery, something our culture resists. . . . Embracing the mystery of depression does not mean passivity or resignation. It means moving into a field of forces that seem alien but is in fact one's deepest self. It means waiting, watching, listening, suffering, and gathering whatever self-knowledge one can—and then making choices based on that knowledge, no matter how difficult. One begins the slow walk back to health by choosing each day things that enliven one's selfhood and resisting things that do not.

I Am I am the voice inside your head, I am the whore in your lover’s bed, I am the one who seeks to harm, I am the scars that blight your arm; I am the tears you cannot control, I am what consumes your soul, I am your mind, your thoughts, your mood, I am your passive attitude; I am the emptiness within, I am the game you cannot win, I am the fury that you feel, I am the wound that will not heal; I am the reason that you cry, I am the fear that will not die, I am your self-doubt, guilt and shame, I am resentment, hate and blame; I am the sum of all you give, I am the way you choose to live, I am all you choose to do, I am nothing without you.

For all my life, I had been passive when faced with dangers. I was stunned as I swam to find that I had, for the first time in my history, asserted myself and been truly heard—respected. It felt monumental, I was buzzing with adrenaline. It was as if I’d become someone else entirely. I had escaped a kidnapper. It finally felt real. My body unclenched tension in the balmy pool. I was proud of the strength I’d found. I was the one who asserted he take me back; I caused him to listen. I was no longer a passive Doll Girl, trapped. This was me learning I could trust my voice—I’d used it, and it finally worked! I was triumphant. This escape showed me: I had grown, and grown vividly.

Though his inner sense of himself is of an innocuous passive spirit, a steady small voice, that doesn’t want to do any harm, get trapped anywhere, or ever die, there is this other self seen from outside, a six-foot-three ex-athlete weighing two-thirty at the least, an apparition wearing a sleek gray summer suit shining all over as if waxed and a big head whose fluffy shadowy hair was trimmed at Shear Joy Hair Styling (unisex, fifteen bucks minimum) to rest exactly on the ears, a fearsome bulk with eyes that see and hands that grab and teeth that bite, a body eating enough at one meal to feed three Ethiopians for a day, a shameless consumer of gasoline, electricity, newspapers, hydrocarbons, carbohydrates.

Primer of Love [Lesson 14] I think the best thing I can do is to be a distraction. A husband lives and breathes his work all day long. If he comes home to more table thumping, how can the poor man ever relax? - Jackie Kennedy Lesson 14) Learn to nip lover's quarrels in the bud by distraction and humor -- without raising your voice. This does not include mastering that passive aggressive ploy called the silent treatment which is much louder and destructive than outright screaming. Nipping techniques include distraction, humor, rough sex and counting backwards from MCLV in Latin.Once you've mastered this technique, you'll spend the night neatly tucked in each other's arms -- though her ass will be a little sore. No argument about that.

A capacity for surprise is an essential aspect of our mental life, and surprise itself is the most sensitive indication of how we understand our world and what we expect from it. There are two main varieties of surprise. Some expectations are active and conscious—you know you are waiting for a particular event to happen. When the hour is near, you may be expecting the sound of the door as your child returns from school; when the door opens you expect the sound of a familiar voice. You will be surprised if an actively expected event does not occur. But there is a much larger category of events that you expect passively; you don’t wait for them, but you are not surprised when they happen. These are events that are normal in a situation, though not sufficiently probable to be actively expected.

It is precisely in that relationship to the Reader that you will find most of the classic faults of style: pretension, condescension, servility, obscurantism, grandiosity, vulgarity, and the like--even academicism. That's why most faults of style can be described in language relevant to human relations. Is your style frank and open...does it have some understated agenda...is it out to prove something it does not or cannot admit...is it trying to impress...show off...is it kissing up...groveling...maybe just a tad passive-aggressive, with a mumbling half-audible voice that is unwilling to explain...is it trying to convince...overwhelm...help...seduce...give pleasure...inflict pain...There is no area of the writer's work that is more responsive to the psychology of human connection than style.

William talks about there being two kinds of will. Will A and Will B, I call it. Will A is what we all learn, to hold your head high, stuff it down, swallow your sobs, work hard kind of will. Will B, while it seems a slacker thing, is actually harder to have. It's a willingness instead of a willfulness, an ability to take life on life's terms as opposed to putting up a big fight. It's about being bendable, not brittle, a person who is brave enough to try to ride the waves instead of trying to stop them. Will B is what you need in order to learn to fall. It's the kind of will my mother never taught me, and yours probably never taught you either. It's a secret greater than sex; it's a spiritual thing. Will B is not passive. It means an active acceptance, a say yes, and you have to have a voice and courage if you want to learn it.

Essay on Lust Identity can’t be concise. It’s knit from sequins and lust and scatters. Mostly everyone was fucking the seven arts with a willed difficulty. Then for one day there was the collective sensation that we carried our lovely voices as if in baskets, piled up in clear tones like grapes. Each voice had achieved its particular mass. From an interior space we heard the word sequin repeating in relation to leaves and the image was yellow-gold leaves moving on dark water. We had undergone an influence of death which was itself imprinted on such a moving sequin: the breath sequins, the heartbeat sequins, the organs and their slowing articulation sequins which drifting from the foreground appear to dim since they gradually go out to illuminate some event so distant we will never own the moment of its perception. But all this gives the illusion of peacefulness which is inert or at least passive when breaths burst smashing into sobbed words some urgent errand trapped in these letters as labour of light diminishing rhythm and if we fiercely decide to clear the stupid human stuff stop waiting for something to come to the father-studded earth shouldn’t this impatience release itself as a tongue so new weeping stops. In young women enamoured of their own intensities the Latin element wells up and knits from lust the pelt on the wall that’s ocelot or shadepelt or the imagination of matter. Nothing’s frugal. As for us, we want to give the city what lust has never ceased to put together. Young women or other women carrying their lovely voices as if on platters, their ten voices or nine voices in urgent errand dictating the imagination of matter. It is not our purpose to obscure the song of no-knowledge.

All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show is how. Without them, our lives get made up for us by other people. Human beings have always joined in groups to imagine how best to live and help one another carry out the plan. The essential function of human community is to arrive at some agreement on what we need, what life ought to be, what we want our children to learn, and then to collaborate in learning and teaching so that we and they can go on the way we think is the right way. Small communities with strong traditions are often clear about the way they want to go, and good at teaching it. But tradition may crystallize imagination to the point of fossilizing it as dogma and forbidding new ideas. Larger communities, such as cities, open up room for people to imagine alternatives, learn from people of different traditions, and invent their own ways to live. As alternatives proliferate, however, those who take the responsibility of teaching find little social and moral consensus on way they should be teaching -- what we need, what life ought to be. In our time of huge populations exposed continuously to reproduced voices, images, and words used for commercial and political profit, there are too many people who want to and can invent us, own us, shape and control us through seductive and powerful media. It's a lot to ask of a child to find a way through all that alone. Nobody can do anything very much, really, alone. What a child needs, what we all need, is to find some other people who have imagined life along lines that make sense to us and allow some freedom, and listen to them. Not hear passively, but listen.

Nature has many tricks wherewith she convinces man of his finity, -the ceaseless flow of the tides, the fury of the storm, the shock of the earthquake, the long roll of heaven's artillery, - but the most tremendous, the most stupefying of all, is the passive phase of the White Silence. All movement ceases, the sky clears, the heavens are as brass; the slightest whisper seems sacrilege, and man becomes timid, affrighted at the sound of his own voice. Sole speck of life journeying across the ghostly wastes of a dead world, he trembles at his audacity, realizes that his is a maggot's life, nothing more. Strange thoughts arise unsummoned, and the mystery of all things strives for utterance. And the fear of death, of god, of the universe comes over him, - the hope of the Resurrection and the Life, the yearning for immortality, the vain striving of the imprisoned essence, - it is then, if ever, man walks alone with God.

Book authors are in high demand for speaking engagements and appearances; they are the new ‘celebrity’ and celebrities gain access. Authors not only make money from royalties or book advances but from their keynotes, presentations and strategically branded product lines. This includes entrepreneurial ideas for you to extend yourself beyond just writing and prepares you to add speaking and consulting to your revenue stream. You have to begin to look outside book sales and towards the speaking market. There are radio, interviews, news, television, small channel television keynotes, lectures, seminars and workshops. These types of events have the possibility to be much more lucrative than just selling books. In essence, the book builds and brands you in the public eye. It gives you credibility and the opportunity to be more than you are. It enables you to now be a voice, a teacher, a leader, an expert - after all, you wrote the book on it!

One way of phrasing it might be to say that injustice and irrationality are inevitable parts of the human condition, but that challenges to them are inevitable also. On Sigmund Freud’s memorial in Vienna appear the words: 'The voice of reason is small, but very persistent.' Philosophers and theologians have cogitated or defined this in differing ways, postulating that we respond to a divinely implanted 'conscience' or that—as Adam Smith had it—we carry around an unseen witness to our thoughts and doings and seek to make a good impression on this worthy bystander. Neither assumption need be valid; it’s enough that we know that this innate spirit exists. We have to add the qualification, however, that even if it is presumptively latent in all of us, it very often remains just that—latent. Its existence guarantees nothing in itself, and the catalytic or Promethean moment only occurs when one individual is prepared to cease being the passive listener to such a voice and to become instead its spokesman, or representative.

how an intention becomes reality, how theory is enfleshed, how abstract reasoning ends in a sensitive, compassionate man slipping in ‘sticky, warm blood’. What state of mind is needed for this to happen? Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) responded to this quandary in his late essay ‘Why Do People Stupefy Themselves?’ (1890), where he sought to explain the state of mental automatism in which Raskolnikov carried out his crime. But Tolstoy, an aggressive teetotaller by this stage in his life, was surely exaggerating when he implies that the glass of beer Raskolnikov consumes at the end of the first chapter ‘silences the voice of conscience’. Raskolnikov’s utter passivity, which makes him succumb to ‘ideas in the air’ and to gamble everything on one desperate act, reaches back far further than the glass of beer, deeper even than the question of ‘conscience’. Nor can it be reduced to the verdict of insanity, as Raskolnikov himself is aware (even when others are not). This passivity is a state of spiritual death and it is this that enables the crime.

Who do I write for? I thought about this again and again over the next few days until the answer crystalized in my consciousness. I write for all readers. But my primary interest is in representing the complex but universal experience of Somalis. I do this because the media representation of the global Somali community is one that is carved out of derivative clichés crammed with pirates, warlords, terrorists, passive women and girls whose entire existence seems to be nothing more than a footnote on the primitive dangers of female genital mutilation. I write because I want to give a long-overdue voice to a community that has experienced a tremendous array of challenges but who constantly face these challenges with the most wicked sense of humour, humility and dignity. My father always used to tell me that in our culture, the done thing when you’re facing hardship and your belly is empty is to moisturize your face, comb your hair, press your clothes and step out into the sun with your sense of humanity intact. It’s a lesson I’ve carried with me to this day.

to be open and straightforward about their needs for attention in a social setting. It is equally rare for members of a group in American culture to honestly and openly express needs that might be in conflict with that individual’s needs. This value of not just honestly but also openly fully revealing the true feelings and needs present in the group is vital for it’s members to feel emotional safe. It is also vital to keeping the group energy up and for giving the feedback that allows it’s members to know themselves, where they stand in relation to others and for spiritual/psychological growth. Usually group members will simply not object to an individual’s request to take the floor—but then act out in a passive-aggressive manner, by making noise or jokes, or looking at their watches. Sometimes they will take the even more violent and insidious action of going brain-dead while pasting a jack-o’-lantern smile on their faces. Often when someone asks to read something or play a song in a social setting, the response is a polite, lifeless “That would be nice.” In this case, N.I.C.E. means “No Integrity or Congruence Expressed” or “Not Into Communicating Emotion.” So while the sharer is exposing his or her vulnerable creation, others are talking, whispering to each other, or sitting looking like they are waiting for the dental assistant to tell them to come on back. No wonder it’s so scary to ask for people’s attention. In “nice” cultures, you are probably not going to get a straight, open answer. People let themselves be oppressed by someone’s request—and then blame that someone for not being psychic enough to know that “Yes” meant “No.” When were we ever taught to negotiate our needs in relation to a group of people? In a classroom? Never! The teacher is expected to take all the responsibility for controlling who gets heard, about what, and for how long. There is no real opportunity to learn how to nonviolently negotiate for the floor. The only way I was able to pirate away a little of the group’s attention in the school I attended was through adolescent antics like making myself fart to get a few giggles, or asking the teacher questions like, “Why do they call them hemorrhoids and not asteroids?” or “If a number two pencil is so popular, why is it still number two,” or “What is another word for thesaurus?” Some educational psychologists say that western culture schools are designed to socialize children into what is really a caste system disguised as a democracy. And in once sense it is probably good preparation for the lack of true democratic dynamics in our culture’s daily living. I can remember several bosses in my past reminding me “This is not a democracy, this is a job.” I remember many experiences in social groups, church groups, and volunteer organizations in which the person with the loudest voice, most shaming language, or outstanding skills for guilting others, controlled the direction of the group. Other times the pain and chaos of the group discussion becomes so great that people start begging for a tyrant to take charge. Many times people become so frustrated, confused and anxious that they would prefer the order that oppression brings to the struggle that goes on in groups without “democracy skills.” I have much different experiences in groups I work with in Europe and in certain intentional communities such as the Lost Valley Educational Center in Eugene, Oregon, where the majority of people have learned “democracy skills.” I can not remember one job, school, church group, volunteer organization or town meeting in mainstream America where “democracy skills” were taught or practiced.

All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. Without them, our lives get made up for us by other people. Human beings have always joined in groups to imagine how best to live and help one another carry out the plan. The essential function of human community is to arrive at some agreement on what we need, what life ought to be, what we want our children to learn, and then to collaborate in learning and teaching so that we and they can go on the way we think is the right way. Small communities with strong traditions are often clear about the way they want to go, and good at teaching it. But tradition may crystallize imagination to the point of fossilizing it as dogma and forbidding new ideas. Larger communities, such as cities, open up room for people to imagine alternatives, learn from people of different traditions, and invent their own ways to live. As alternatives proliferate, however, those who take the responsibility of teaching find little social and moral consensus on what they should be teaching -- what we need, what life ought to be. In our time of huge populations exposed continuously to reproduced voices, images, and words used for commercial and political profit, there are too many people who want to and can invent us, own us, shape and control us through seductive and powerful media. It's a lot to ask of a child to find a way through all that alone. Nobody can do anything very much, really, alone. What a child needs, what we all need, is to find some other people who have imagined life along lines that make sense to us and allow some freedom, and listen to them. Not hear passively, but listen.

My mother made me into the type of person who is at ease standing in the middle of moving traffic, the type of person who ends up having more adventures and making more mistakes. Mum never stopped encouraging me to try, fail and take risks. I kept pushing myself to do unconventional things because I liked the reaction I got from her when I told her what I'd done. Mum's response to all my exploits was to applaud them. Great, you're living your life, and not the usual life prescribed for a woman either. Well done! Thanks to her, unlike most girls at the time, I grew up regarding recklessness, risk-taking and failure as laudable pursuits. Mum did the same for Vida by giving her a pound every time she put herself forward. If Vida raised her hand at school and volunteered to go to an old people's home to sing, or recited a poem in assembly, or joined a club, Mum wrote it down in a little notebook. Vida also kept a tally of everything she'd tried to do since she last saw her grandmother and would burst out with it all when they met up again. She didn't get a pound if she won a prize or did something well or achieved good marks in an exam, and there was no big fuss or attention if she failed at anything. She was only rewarded for trying. That was the goal. This was when Vida was between the ages of seven and fifteen, the years a girl is most self-conscious about her voice, her looks and fitting in, when she doesn't want to stand out from the crowd or draw attention to herself. Vida was a passive child – she isn't passive now. I was very self-conscious when I was young, wouldn't raise my voice above a whisper or look an adult in the eye until I was thirteen, but without me realizing it Mum taught me to grab life, wrestle it to the ground and make it work for me. She never squashed any thoughts or ideas I had, no matter how unorthodox or out of reach they were. She didn't care what I looked like either. I started experimenting with my clothes aged eleven, wearing top hats, curtains as cloaks, jeans torn to pieces, bare feet in the streets, 1930s gowns, bells around my neck, and all she ever said was, 'I wish I had a camera.

Here are two examples of just how strange and unique humans can be when they go about harming one another and caring for one another. The first example involves, well, my wife. So we’re in the minivan, our kids in the back, my wife driving. And this complete jerk cuts us off, almost causing an accident, and in a way that makes it clear that it wasn’t distractedness on his part, just sheer selfishness. My wife honks at him, and he flips us off. We’re livid, incensed. Asshole-where’s-the-cops-when-you-need-them, etc. And suddenly my wife announces that we’re going to follow him, make him a little nervous. I’m still furious, but this doesn’t strike me as the most prudent thing in the world. Nonetheless, my wife starts trailing him, right on his rear. After a few minutes the guy’s driving evasively, but my wife’s on him. Finally both cars stop at a red light, one that we know is a long one. Another car is stopped in front of the villain. He’s not going anywhere. Suddenly my wife grabs something from the front seat divider, opens her door, and says, “Now he’s going to be sorry.” I rouse myself feebly—“Uh, honey, do you really think this is such a goo—” But she’s out of the car, starts pounding on his window. I hurry over just in time to hear my wife say, “If you could do something that mean to another person, you probably need this,” in a venomous voice. She then flings something in the window. She returns to the car triumphant, just glorious. “What did you throw in there!?” She’s not talking yet. The light turns green, there’s no one behind us, and we just sit there. The thug’s car starts to blink a very sensible turn indicator, makes a slow turn, and heads down a side street into the dark at, like, five miles an hour. If it’s possible for a car to look ashamed, this car was doing it. “Honey, what did you throw in there, tell me?” She allows herself a small, malicious grin. “A grape lollipop.” I was awed by her savage passive-aggressiveness—“You’re such a mean, awful human that something must have gone really wrong in your childhood, and maybe this lollipop will help correct that just a little.” That guy was going to think twice before screwing with us again. I swelled with pride and love.

When an ovulating woman offers herself to you, she's the choicest morsel on the planet. Her nipples are already sharp, her labia already swollen, her spine already undulating. Her skin is damp and she pants. If you touch the center of her forehead with your thumb she isn't thinking about her head—she isn't thinking at all, she's imagining, believing, willing your hand to lift and turn and curve, cup the back of her head. She's living in a reality where the hand will have no choice but to slide down that soft, flexing muscle valley of the spine to the flare of strong hips, where the other hand joins the first to hold both hip bones, immobilize them against the side of the counter, so that you can touch the base of her throat gently with your lips and she will whimper and writhe and let the muscles in her legs go, but she won't fall, because you have her. She'll be feeling this as though it's already happening, knowing absolutely that it will, because every cell is alive and crying out, Fill me, love me, cherish me, be tender, but, oh God, be sure. She wants you to want her. And when her pupils expand like that, as though you have dropped black ink into a saucer of cool blue water, and her head tips just a little, as though she's gone blind or has had a terrible shock or maybe just too much to drink, to her she is crying in a great voice, Fuck me, right here, right now against the kitchen counter, because I want you wrist-deep inside me. I hunger, I burn, I need. It doesn't matter if you are tired, or unsure, if your stomach is hard with dread at not being forgiven. If you allow yourself one moment's distraction—a microsecond's break in eye contact, a slight shift in weight—she knows, and that knowledge is a punch in the gut. She will back up a step and search your face, and she'll feel embarrassed—a fool or a whore—at offering so blatantly what you're not interested in, and her fine sense of being queen of the world will shiver and break like a glass shield hit by a mace, and fall around her in dust. Oh, it will still sparkle, because sex is magic, but she will be standing there naked, and you will be a monster, and the next time she feels her womb quiver and clench she'll hesitate, which will confuse you, even on a day when there is no dread, no uncertainty, and that singing sureness between you will dissolve and very slowly begin to sicken and die. The body knows. I listened to the deep message—but carefully, because at some point the deep message also must be a conscious message. Active, not just passive, agreement. I took her hand and guided the wok back down to the gas burner. Yes, her body still said, yes. I turned off the gas, but slowly, and now she reached for me.

From an essay on early reading by Robert Pinsky: My favorite reading for many years was the "Alice" books. The sentences had the same somber, drugged conviction as Sir John Tenniel's illustrations, an inexplicable, shadowy dignity that reminded me of the portraits and symbols engraved on paper money. The books were not made of words and sentences but of that smoky assurance, the insistent solidity of folded, textured, Victorian interiors elaborately barricaded against the doubt and ennui of a dreadfully God-forsaken vision. The drama of resisting some corrosive, enervating loss, some menacing boredom, made itself clear in the matter-of-fact reality of the story. Behind the drawings I felt not merely a tissue of words and sentences but an unquestioned, definite reality. I read the books over and over. Inevitably, at some point, I began trying to see how it was done, to unravel the making--to read the words as words, to peek behind the reality. The loss entailed by such knowledge is immense. Is the romance of "being a writer"--a romance perhaps even created to compensate for this catastrophic loss--worth the price? The process can be epitomized by the episode that goes with one of my favorite illustrations. Alice has entered a dark wood--"much darker than the last wood": [S]he reached the wood: It looked very cool and shady. "Well, at any rate it's a great comfort," she said as she stepped under the trees, "after being so hot, to get into the--into the--into what?" she went on, rather surprised at not being able to think of the word. "I mean to get under the--under the--under this, you know!" putting her hand on the trunk of the tree. "What does it call itself, I wonder? I do believe it's got no name--why to be sure it hasn't!" This is the wood where things have no names, which Alice has been warned about. As she tries to remember her own name ("I know it begins with L!"), a Fawn comes wandering by. In its soft, sweet voice, the Fawn asks Alice, "What do you call yourself?" Alice returns the question, the creature replies, "I'll tell you, if you'll come a little further on . . . . I can't remember here". The Tenniel picture that I still find affecting illustrates the first part of the next sentence: So they walked on together through the wood, Alice with her arms clasped lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into another open field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice's arm. "I'm a Fawn!" it cried out in a voice of delight. "And dear me! you're a human child!" A sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had darted away at full speed. In the illustration, the little girl and the animal walk together with a slightly awkward intimacy, Alice's right arm circled over the Fawn's neck and back so that the fingers of her two hands meet in front of her waist, barely close enough to mesh a little, a space between the thumbs. They both look forward, and the affecting clumsiness of the pose suggests that they are tripping one another. The great-eyed Fawn's legs are breathtakingly thin. Alice's expression is calm, a little melancholy or spaced-out. What an allegory of the fall into language. To imagine a child crossing over from the jubilant, passive experience of such a passage in its physical reality, over into the phrase-by-phrase, conscious analysis of how it is done--all that movement and reversal and feeling and texture in a handful of sentences--is somewhat like imagining a parallel masking of life itself, as if I were to discover, on reflection, that this room where I am writing, the keyboard, the jar of pens, the lamp, the rain outside, were all made out of words. From "Some Notes on Reading," in The Most Wonderful Books (Milkweed Editions)

There are essentially three voice tones available to negotiators: the late-night FM DJ voice, the positive/playful voice, and the direct or assertive voice. Forget the assertive voice for now; except in very rare circumstances, using it is like slapping yourself in the face while you’re trying to make progress. You’re signaling dominance onto your counterpart, who will either aggressively, or passive-aggressively, push back against attempts to be controlled.

It shouldn’t be up to women to dismantle the patriarchy, but we can’t sit around and hope someone else does it either. Feminist is not a passive label; it means speaking out and standing up for women everywhere, and also for yourself. One woman calling out an injustice is powerful enough; when we raise our voices together, we can shake the status quo to its foundation.

In the documentary program Passive Investing: The Evidence the Fund Management Industry Would Prefer You Not See, many of the world's top economists and financial academics voice the futility of buying actively managed funds. But as the title suggests, it's the program most financial advisors will never want you watching.

One good way to listen is to listen with a sacred text: a psalm or a prayer, for instance. The Hindu spiritual writer Eknath Easwaran showed me the great value of learning a sacred text by heart and repeating it slowly in the mind, word by word, sentence by sentence. In this way, listening to the voice of love becomes not just a passive waiting, but an active attentiveness to the voice that speaks to us through the words of the Scriptures.

When someone says something petty or nasty, one of those little passive-aggressive things that would usually just pick at me for days, my new response is not to shut the door and bitch to anyone who will listen. Now? The moment they say it? “What did you mean by that?” I ask in a calm voice. It startles them. I realize that most of us aren’t used to being spoken TO. We are used to being spoken about. We are used to avoiding all the conflict. And of course, in the avoidance all we’re doing is creating more drama.