“A woman who is true of heart is the ultimate threat to the fictional images that animate the interiority of many men. He sees her, too, as an image. A ‘special fiction’ like a bendable doll, but with dangerous, magical powers.

The appearance of such a woman in a man’s life is deceptive; he feels at once as if he will be rescued… but more poignantly … more desperately … that the images and fictions he secretly, even to himself, adores, will undergo a mystical violation that is irreconcilable.

For his secret-even-to-himself interiority, this is Death.

And so, eventually, he will attack her. Or, simply, dismiss her to repeat the cycle with other women who are more amenable, in the sense of a kind of fashion-like esthetic, to preserving these fictions and images that he secretly adores, and is most often entirely unconscious of.”

— a man