Anne Dufourmantelle

true enemy of gentleness is … gentleness. Fake gentleness, mawkishness, this passivity sold to us via every New Age commercial technique, of relaxation or of an overused meaning of “zen.”

is all of this simultaneously without being any one of these elements more than the other.

When they are not despised, the gentle are persecuted or sanctified. We abandon them because gentleness as power shows us the reality of our own weakness.

To respect the intimate space of the other is to make an alliance with the night without wanting to put an end to it, to imagine that light isn’t the opposite of the dark but its most secret ally, and to recognize in the secret—acts, thoughts, emotions—the opposite of a threat, the very condition of relation.

The thing to do now is to turn away from these moments of intimacy with the self: Silence is replaced by noise, almost continuous chatter, the omnipresence of screens