Quotes about cutting
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“It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Flowers, Waiting

“The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Happy, Way, Happiness

“To cut off the confusion and accept an answer just because it's too scary not to have an answer is a good way to get the wrong answer.”

Janet Jackson book True You: A Journey to Finding and Loving Yourself

Source: True You: A Journey to Finding and Loving Yourself

Way

“Life is long, and sometimes cruel. Sometimes victims are needed. Someone has to take on that role. And human bodies are fragile, easily damaged. Cut them, and they bleed.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Life

“No matter how far back you cut a willow tree, it will never really die.”

Ann Brashares book 3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows

Source: 3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows

Tree

“Smiling, I cut across the quadrangle toward the commons. I felt better about life than I had in a very long time. We could do this, Lissa and me. We could do this together.”

Richelle Mead Vampire Academy

Source: Vampire Academy

Life, Smile, Time

“Nothing cuts deeper than when another person says exactly what you're afraid to say out loud.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Bullet

Source: Bullet

Personality

“He does not see as i have that you have given him your heart, but he is male. We will cut him some slack for that handicap, yes?”

Katie MacAlister (1964) Author

Heart

“Everything we need to know is locked up in your head, under those pretty red curls."
Clary reached up to touch her hair protectively. "I dont think-"
"So what are you going to do?" Simon asked sharply. "Cut her head open to get at it?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Thinking

“Well, people got attatched. Once you cut the umbilical cord they attatched to the other things. Sight, sound, sex, money, mirages, mothers, masturbation, murder, and Monday morning hangovers.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Money, People, Sex

“Lately, I have been having nightmares, where I'm cut into so many pieces that there isn't enough of me to be put back together.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“Anger is the fluid love bleeds when you cut it.”

Walter Hooper (1931) literary advisor of the estate of C.S. Lewis

Source: C. S. Lewis: A Complete Guide to His Life & Works

Love, Anger

“Nobody's cut out for this town," Shane said. "Nobody sane anyway."
"Says the kid who came back."
"Yeah, kind of proves my point.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Ghost Town

“… her wings are cut and then she is blamed for not knowing how to fly.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Second Sex

Source: The Second Sex

Flying

“One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

"Du Rêve" in La Difficulté d’Etre [The Difficulty of Being] (1947)

Dreams

“Don't let your girlfriend cut your hair!”

Stephen Colbert book I Am America (And So Can You!)

I Am America

“Where were we? I've forgotten.
He was deciding whether to cut her throat or love her forever.
Right. Yes. The usual choices.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Love

“But when he’s cut, I bleed.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Source: Shards of Honour

“In my experience, the most staunchly held views are based on ignorance or accepted dogma, not carefully considered accumulations of facts. The more you expose the intricacies and realtities of the situation, the less clear-cut things become.”

Mary Roach book Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

Source: Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

“Her hair is smoldering. Her face was smudged with soot. She had a cut on her arms, her dress was torn, and she was missing a boot. Beautiful.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Beauty

“Farewell, Father," she said. He fell back upon his chair, choking. She laughed, not with mirth or even mockery, but something that was closer to a sob. "You crafted me so sharp, I cut even myself.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: The Poison Eaters and Other Stories

“Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

Picture Parade, BBC (5 July 1960)

Life

“I would give you my soul in a blackberry pie; and a knife to cut it with.”

Dorothy Dunnett (1923–2001) British writer

Source: The Disorderly Knights

Soul

“Do it for yourself. The universe will be around to collect its cut later.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Mirror Dance (1994)

Universe

“I've met talespinners before, Jake, and they're all cut more or less from the same cloth. They tell tales because they're afraid of life.”

Stephen King The Dark Tower

Source: The Dark Tower

Life, Clothes

“I think they should have a Barbie with a buzz cut.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Thinking

“I'd rather cut my throat," she said.
An intriguing thought. But I can do it so much more enjoyably.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

“Muriel, you're not a convenience. I'd walk across a mile of cut glass in my bare feet to hold your hand and talk to you for one hour. You're everything to me.--Walt”

Robyn Carr American writer

Source: Paradise Valley

“Don't think of death as an ending. Think of it as a really effective way of cutting down your expenses.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Death, Way, Thinking

“The finger cut, to save the hand.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“The meaning of life has not much to do with good and evil, right and wrong, duty, honor, country, or any of that.

It has to do with cutting the right deal.”

Nelson DeMille (1943) American writer

Life, Evil, Country

“Guys always think tears are a sign of weakness. They’re a sign of FRUSTRATION. She’s only crying so she won’t cut your throat in your sleep. So make nice and be grateful.”

Donna Barr (1952) comic book author and cartoonist

Guy, Thinking, Tear, Sleep

“Anya, the minor goddess of Anarchy? A woman who had more balls than most men—because she’d cut them off the guys stupid enough to get in her way and kept them as souvenirs.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Seduction

Men, Stupidity, Way, Guy

“It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out
of love as there is for getting in. Some people look upon marriage as a
short cut that way, but it has been known to fail.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

Love, Marriage, People, Way

“The days hardened with cold and boredom like last year's loaves of bread. One began to cut them with blunt knives without appetite, with a lazy indifference.”

Bruno Schulz book The Street of Crocodiles

Source: The Street of Crocodiles

Indifference

“Maybe wrist corsages cut off circulation to the brain? I mean, is that why so many girls do stupid things on prom night? I was really going to have to investigate this further, I decided”

Ally Carter I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Stupidity, Girl, Night

“No rescue boat can save the touches I left bobbing in the wild ocean of your flesh, but if they cut open your heart, like the belly of a shark, dumped its contents on a table—would there be any trace of me?”

Jeffrey McDaniel (1967) American writer

Source: The Splinter Factory

Heart

“If time were a bolt of cloth,” said Om, “I would cut out all the bad parts. Snip out the scary nights and stitch together the good parts, to make time bearable. Then I could wear it like a coat, always live happily.”

Rohinton Mistry A Fine Balance

Source: A Fine Balance

Time, Parting, Clothes, Night

“How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

World, Way, Bird, Sense

“We're just not cut out for all this media circus crap.
But then, you already knew that.”

James Patterson book Maximum Ride

Source: Max

“It sounds silly I know. But for me, the power of music rests in its ability to reach inside and touch the places where the deepest cuts lie. Like a benevolent god, a good song will never let you down.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

God, Lie, Music

“If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off?”

Robert A. Heinlein book Starship Troopers

Source: Starship Troopers

Baby

“Surgeons can cut out everything except cause.”

Herbert M. Shelton (1895–1985) American medical writer

“Self-esteem can be so exhausting. I want to cut my hair, change my clothes, erase the pimple from the near-tip of my nose, and strengthen my upper-arm definition, all in the next hour.”

David Levithan Boy Meets Boy

Source: Boy Meets Boy

Change, Clothes

“Nobody at any time is cut off from God.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

God, Time

“If there was a God, he'd guide the winds, let them blow for me so that, with a tug of my string, I'd cut loose my pain, my longing.”

Khaled Hosseini (1965) novelist

God, Pain

“He leaned down and whispered to me: No matter how thin you get, no matter how short you cut your hair, it's still going to be you underneath. And he let go of my arm and walked back down the hall.”

Marya Hornbacher book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

“I failed eating, failed drinking, failed not cutting myself into shreds. Failed friendship. Failed sisterhood and daughterhood. Failed mirrors and scales and phone calls. Good thing I'm stable.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Friendship, Drink

“Mortal fear is as crucial a thing to our lives as love. It cuts to the core of our being and shows us what we are. Will you step back and cover your eyes? Or will you have the strength to walk to the precipice and look out?”

Marisha Pessl (1977) American writer

Source: Night Film

Love, Fear

“Hush little baby, Dont you cry, Dont cut your arms, Dont say goodbye. Put down that razor, Put down that light, It maybe hard but, You'll win this fight.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Light, Fight, Baby, Cry

“You know, do nice shite for her. Buy her things. Really think about what she likes and what makes her happy and make it happen. She'll come around. And if she doesn't, you can cut off your horns for her. Chicks dig that." (Cadeon)”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Kiss of a Demon King

Thinking, Happiness

“Witch, do this for me,
Find me a moon
made of longing.
Then cut it sliver thin,
and having cut it,
hang it high
above my beloved's house,
so that she may look up
tonight
and see it,
and seeing it, sigh for me
as I sigh for her,
moon or no moon.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Housing

“Children are knives, my mother once said. They don’t mean to, but they cut. And yet we cling to them, don’t we, we clasp them until the blood flows.”

Joanne Harris (1964) British author

Source: The Girl with No Shadow

For Mother, Children

“I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it's medically conservative to cut people open or put them on powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives … Animal products are the main culprit in what is killing us. We can absolutely live better lives without them.”

Dean Ornish (1953) American physician

Quoted in Roberto Suro, "Hearts and Minds", New York Times Magazine (29 December 1991).

People, Understanding, Animals

“At long last he was unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess, a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

World, Parent

“If pregnancy were a book they would cut the last two chapters.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Books

“Do you know how, when you are on the verge of a breakdown, the world pounds in your ears; a rush of blood, of consequence? Do you now how it feels when the truth cuts your tongue to ribbons, and still you have to speak it?”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

Truth, World, Feeling

“I start drawing, and eventually the characters involve themselves in a situation. Then in the end, I go back and try to cut out most of the preachments.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Drawing

“What she hadn't realized was that sometimes when your vision was that sharp and true, it could cut you. That only if you'd felt such fullness could you really understand the ache of being empty.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Understanding

“What are you doing?" she asked, trying to raise herself.

"First, I thought I'd show you what a pity it would be if they cut off my wicked tongue.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Froi of the Exiles

“Life is about coming to terms with the mistakes made. Learning to live with them even when they cut soul deep.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Silence

Life, Soul, Learning

“The old woman was the kind who would not cut down a large old tree because it was a large old tree.”

Flannery O’Connor book The Complete Stories

Source: The Complete Stories

Tree

“I grew up in a household where we didn't really talk about our feelings, and where the only reason you went to a doctor was because you'd accidentally cut off a limb with a chain saw.”

Jodi Picoult book Sing You Home

Source: Sing You Home

Feeling

“I'd cut up my heart for you to wear if you wanted it.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Heart

“Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002)

Fear, Imagination, Reality

“Take it, and cut your brother's throat with it, and take back the honor of your blood.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

“She supposed they were imperfections, those marks, but they didn't feel that way to her; they were a history, cut into his body: the map of a life of endless war.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Life, War, Way, Feeling

“It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

“The sound of my name in his voice stopped me in midturn. I don't know how the hell he did it, but whenever he said my name, it cut through all other distractions and made me pause, as if he'd clenched me to him and kissed me.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

Hell, Kiss

“Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! Do him in!”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Variant: Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!
Source: Lord of the Flies (1954), Ch. 9: A View to a Death

“(As she entered the main room, Syn turned around in his chair and almost fell out of it as he scanned her body. He cleared his throat and cut an appreciative look to Nykyrian.)
Dayum…woman be hot. (Syn)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

“Mr. Sagunuma: We can never escape who we are. Instead of wasting time worrying about it, why don't you cut to he chase and love yourself?”

Bisco Hatori (1975) Japanese manga artist

Source: Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 4

Love, Time

“A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City, and he'd still see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void…”

William Gibson book Neuromancer

Source: Neuromancer (1984)
Context: A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City, and he'd still see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void… The Sprawl was a long strange way home over the Pacific now, and he was no console man, no cyberspace cowboy. Just another hustler, trying to make it through. But the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo, and he'd cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the dark, curled in his capsule in some coffin hotel, his hands clawed into the bedslab, temperfoam bunched between his fingers, trying to reach the console that wasn't there.

Dreams, Hope, Sleep, Speed

“I have a perfect cure for a sore throat: cut it.”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

Perfection

“Religion is like a knife: you can either use it to cut bread, or stick in someone's back.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Religion

“A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

As quoted in Wisdom for the Soul : Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 412
Variant: You have everything but one thing: madness. A man needs a little madness or else - he never dares cut the rope and be free.
Source: Zorba the Greek

Personality, Madness

“The cloak of the past is cut from patches of feeling, and sewn with rebus threads. Most of the time, the best we can do is wrap it around ourselves for comfort or drag it behind us as we struggle to go on.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Feeling, Time, Past