I was capable of evil

Something had gone wrong. I'd come to this war a quiet, thoughtful sort of person, a college grad, Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude, all the credentials, but after seven months in the bush I realized that those high, civilized trappings had somehow been crushed under the weight of the simple daily realities. I'd turned mean inside. Even a little cruel at times. For all my education, all my fine liberal values, I now felt a deep coldness inside me, something dark and beyond reason. It's a hard thing to admit, even to myself, but I was capable of evil. I wanted to hurt Bobby Jorgenson the way he'd hurt me. For weeks it had been a vow--I'll get him, I'll get him--it was down inside me like a rock. Granted, I didn't hate him anymore, and I'd lost some of the outrage and passion, but the need for revenge kept eating at me. At night I sometimes drank too much. I'd remember getting shot and yelling out for a medic and then waiting and waiting and waiting, passing out once, then waking up and screaming some more, and how the screaming seemed to make new pain, the awful stink of myself, the sweat and fear, Bobby Jorgenson's clumsy fingers when he finally got around to working on me. I kept going over it all, every detail. I remembered the soft, fluid heat of my own blood. Shock, I thought, and I tried to tell him that, but my tongue wouldn't make the connection. I wanted to yell, "You jerk, it's shock--I'm dying!" but all I could do was whinny and squeal. I remembered that, and the hospital, and the nurses. I even remembered the rage. But I couldn't feel it anymore. In the end, all I felt was that coldness down inside my chest. Number one: the guy had almost killed me. Number two: there had to be consequences.

--Tim O'Brien, "The Ghost Soldiers," The Things They Carried (1990)

They wanted and yearned to see life in a certain way

Now that the ice was broken, could he not do other things? What was there to stop him? While sitting there at the table waiting for his breakfast, he felt that he was arriving at something which had long eluded him. Things were becoming clear; he would know how to act from now on. The thing to do was to act just like others acted, live like they lived, and while they were not looking, do what you wanted. They would never know. He felt in the quiet presence of his mother, brother, and sister a force, inarticulate and unconscious, making for living without thinking, making for peace and habit, making for a hope that blinded. He felt that they wanted and yearned to see life in a certain way; they needed a certain picture of the world; there was one way of living they preferred above all others; and they were blind to what did not fit. They did not want to see what others were doing if that doing did not feed their own desires. All one had to do was be bold, do something nobody thought of. The whole thing came to him in the form of a powerful and simple feeling; there was in everyone a great hunger to believe that made him blind, and if he could see while others were blind, then he could get what he wanted and never be caught at it. Now, who on earth would think that he, a black timid Negro boy, would murder and burn a rich white girl and would sit and wait for his breakfast like this? Elation filled him.

--Richard Wright, Native Son (1940) 

Maybe Awful Things Is How God Speaks To Us

Vernon studied his father in the milky light, searching for something in his face, or the way he held his body, that was evidence of the good man he knew as a child. If God didn't want Mr. Augusto dead, why'd he let Pop kill him? With all the killing in the world, did one more man really matter?

Vernon crossed the room and crawled from the shimmering cavern. Maybe awful things is how God speaks to us, Vernon thought, trudging up the lightless tunnel.  Maybe folks don't trust in good things no more. Maybe awful things is all God's got to remind us he's alive. Maybe war is God come to life in men. Vernon pushed on toward the light of day. He stepped out onto the ledge and into the heat, and it felt like leaving a theater after the matinee had shown a sad film, the glare of sunshine after the darkness far too real to suffer.

--Alan Heathcock, "Smoke," Volt (2011)

They's Evils in People that Make Little if Any Sense...

Pip never showed.  Pat had to break the news to Stace, alone.  She sat on a love seat decorated with cigarette burns and cat hair.  She'd a muskrat mien, tear-swollen eyes and a body gouged by scabs.  She caught her breath and asked, "Why'd a person run over an innocent child?"  She paused, lost in an unfilled blank, ran her chicken-bone arm over her sunken complexion and said, "Toss them into the river just like they's a piece of trash."

Pat sat on the ratty sofa, trying to ignore the waft of unchanged cat litter, the stubbed-out smokes lining ashtrays, empty plastic cola bottles on their sides, and food-smeared dishes.  All he could muster was "They's evils in people that make little if any sense, and trying to figure them out does a person little to no good."

--Frank Bill, "Trespassing Between  Heaven and Hell," Crimes in Southern Indiana (2011)

The Perfection of Life

Since the goal of the virtuous way of life is the very thing we have been seeking,...it is time for you, noble friend,...to be known by God and to become His friend. This is true perfection: not to avoid a wicked life because like slaves we servilely fear punishment, not to do good because we hope for rewards, as if cashing in on the virtuous life by some business-like arrangement. On the contrary, disregarding all those things for which we hope and which have been reserved by promise, we regard falling from God's friendship as the only thing dreadful and we consider becoming God's friend the only thing worthy of honor and desire. This, as I have said, is the perfection of life.

—St. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, 390.

'one must do the whole evil'

'When one does evil one must do the whole evil. To be only half a monster is insanity! There is ecstasy in an extreme of crime.'

—Claude Frollo in Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame of Paris (1831) (trans. John Sturrock 1978)