It can happen sometimes, with those who brood on an injustice, that a taste for revenge can usefully combine with a sense of obligation.

Revenge may be exacted a hundred times over in one sleepless night. The impulse, the dreaming intention, is human, normal, and we should forgive ourselves. But the raised hand, the actual violent enactment, is cursed. The maths says so. There’ll be no reversion to the status quo ante, no balm, no sweet relief, or none that lasts. Only a second crime. Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves, Confucius said. Revenge unstitches a civilisation. It’s a reversion to constant, visceral fear.

Justice belongs to those who claim it, but let the claimant beware lest he create new injustice by his claim and thus set the bloody pendulum of revenge into its inexorable motion

Narrative Tension is primarily about witholding information.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but my experience belongs to me, not the collective bloody unconscious.

Not everyone knows what it is to have your father’s rival’s penis inches from your nose.