“I had to listen when my friends told me to wash my eyes with blood
Everything at once was tangled in blood —
each face, each idol, red everywhere.
Blood swept over the sun, washing away its gold.
The moon erupted with blood, its silver extinguished.”
quoted from Tariq Ali - The Clash of Fundamentalisms_ Crusades, Jihads and Modernity-Verso (2002)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Faiz Ahmad Faiz 3
Punjabi poet 1911–1984Related quotes
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 69.
The Village Book (1930) – after a killing of a badger by villagers.
“Men wash their hands in blood, as best they can:
I find no fault in this just man.”
"Eighth Air Force," lines 16-20
Losses (1948)
Context: For this last savior, man,
I have lied as I lie now. But what is lying?
Men wash their hands in blood, as best they can:
I find no fault in this just man.

A variant reading of White's notes exists: Then later I said to Bobby — what's the line between histrionics and drama. I should have kept the blood on. but in White's own published memoir In Search of History: A Personal Adventure (1978) this is rendered "what's the line between history and drama?"
The "Camelot" interview (29 November 1963)
Context: History!... Everybody kept saying to me to put a cold towel around my head and wipe the blood off... later, I saw myself in the mirror; my whole face spattered with blood and hair... I wiped it off with Kleenex... History! … I thought, no one really wants me there. Then one second later I thought, why did I wash the blood off? I should have left it there, let them see what they've done... If I'd just had the blood and caked hair when they took the picture … Then later I said to Bobby — what's the line between history and drama? I should have kept the blood on.

Apocalypse (1930)
Context: What man most passionately wants is his living wholeness and his living unison, not his own isolate salvation of his "soul." Man wants his physical fulfillment first and foremost, since now, once and once only, he is in the flesh and potent. For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human soul, as my spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family. There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters.

Diwan of Imru' al-Qays, Poem 2, quoted in Dictionary of Literary Biography, p. 213
The Poem of Imru' al-Qais

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 83.

Quote of an entry in his Diary (22 January 1892), on the experience which inspired his famous painting, '(The Scream)' ('Shrik'), originally titled: 'Der Schrei der Natur' ('The Cry of Nature')
1880 - 1895