We would gratify all the goodness in us by punishing him, by seeing justice done. And we would gratify all the evil in us by applying justice ourselves, with our own hands, by giving evil a completely free rein, by causing pain and hurt under the guise of proper retribution.
—Yusuf Idris in his brilliant short-story The Aorta. (The quotation is of the markedly misled narrator, not of Idris himself.)
