“Torn between the impulse to stroke his head, and the urge to cave it in with a rock, I did neither.”

“They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike.”

“I only wish I may see your head stroked down with a slipper.”

“the government did not fulfil the urge in their hearts and felt that the public wished to see me openly revealing my sympathy for our kinsmen; how could I as the head of state!”

“The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.”

“A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.”

“While thus he threw his Elbow round,
Depopulating all the Ground,
And, with his whistling Sythe, does cut
Each stroke between the Earth and Root,
The edged Stele by careless chance
Did into his own Ankle glance;
And there among the Grass fell down,
by his own Sythe, the Mower mown.”

“I would hit you on the head with a rock and drag you away from this. But it would only shatter the rock.”

“I did have Botox once and I felt like I'd had a stroke. It was so claustrophobic.”

“I shook my head no. For minutes, neither of us spoke a word. It breathed between us, what he had said, the pain of a life suppressed, of happiness never to be.”