Lions don’t know they are lions. They don’t know how brave they are. - Margaret Atwood

How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all. What an available temptation.

"You know I love you. You're the only one."

"She isn't the first woman he's ever said that to. He shouldn't have used it up so much earlier in his life, he shouldn't have treated it like a tool, a wedge, a key to open women. By the time he got around to meaning it, the words sounded fraudulent to him and he'd been ashamed to pronounce them."

How can I have behaved so badly, so cruelly, so stupidly? you will ask. You yourself would never have done such things! But you yourself will never have had to.