“I have learned that neither kindness nor cruelty by themselves, independent of each other, creates any effect beyond themselves; and I have learned that the two combined, together, at the same time, are the teaching emotion.”

Edward Albee, The Zoo Story

“You see, Carter, people are two things: greedy and cruel.”

Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

“Cruelty is as old as life itself.”

John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos

“Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.”

Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn