In violence there is often the quality of yearning - the yearning for completion. For closure. For that which is absent and would if present bring to fulfillment. For the body without which the wing is a useless frozen ornament. ("A Short Guide To The City")
Interpretation
The quote reflects the idea that violence stems from a deep desire for wholeness and resolution.
Peter Straub's quote suggests that violence can be driven by an inherent longing for what is missing in life, indicating that people often resort to destructive means in the hope of achieving a sense of completeness or closure. The metaphor of the body and the wing emphasizes that without essential components, pursuits or lives can feel unfulfilled, much like an ornament lacking significance without its context.
In practice
During a lecture on human emotions, you might use this quote to illustrate the complexities of violent behavior.
Ideally, I would create a book so interdependent and self-sustaining in its parts, so wondrously connected word by word and paragraph by paragraph, so charged with the joy of language, that it would actually float three or four inches above any table where you try to set it down.
Unless a man gives himself entirely to the Cross, in a spirit of humility and self-abasement; unless he casts himself down to be trampled underfoot by all and despised, accepting injustice, contempt and mockery; unless he undergoes all these things with joy for the sake of the Lord, not claiming any kind of human reward whatsoever - glory or honor or earthly pleasures - he cannot become a true Christian.
Remember this: once the human race is established on more than one planet and especially, in more than one solar system, there is no way now imaginable to kill off the human race.
I am a strong believer that without justice, there is no peace. No lasting peace, anyway.
A plongeur is a slave, and a wasted slave, doing stupid and largely unnecessary work. He is kept at work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling that he would be dangerous if he had leisure. And educated people, who should be on his side, acquiesce in the process, because they know nothing about him and consequently are afraid of him.
The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives - the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself.
But when the fairy sang the whole world listened to him. Stephen felt clouds pause in their passing; he felt sleeping hills shift and murmur; he felt cold mists dance. He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands. In the fairy’s song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself.
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