Quotes about knife (276 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“I don't feel much pain Got a knife in my back, and a bullet in my brain I’m clinically insane Walkin' home alone, I see faces in the rain”

Lil Peep (1996–2017) American rapper

Song The Way I See Things, Album: LiL PEEP; PART ONE

Pain , Feeling , Home

“You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Love

“Once she was gone, I knelt next to Annabeth and felt her forehead. She was still burning up.
"You're cute when you're worried," she muttered. "Your eyebrows get all scrunched together."
"You aregoing to die while I owe you a favor," I said. "Why did you take that knife?"
"You would've done the same for me."
It was true. I guess we both knew it. Still, I felt like somebody was poking my heart with a cold metal rod.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

Heart

“If I had to tell you how humans made their way to Earth, it would go like this: In the beginning, there was nothing at all but the moon and the sun. And the moon wanted to come out during the day, but there was something so much brighter that seemed to fill up all those hours. The moon grew hungry, thinner and thinner, until she was just a slice of herself, and her tips were as sharp as a knife. By accident, because that is the way most things happen, she poked a hole in the night and out spilled a million stars, like a fountain of tears.

Horrified, the moon tried to swallow them up. And sometimes this worked, because she got fatter and rounder.. But mostly it didn't, because there were just so many. The stars kept coming, until they made the sky so bright that the sun got jealous. He invited the stars to his side of the world, where it was always bright. What he didn't tell them, though, was that in the daytime, they'd never be seen. So the stupid ones leaped from the sky to the ground, and they froze under the weight of their own foolishness.

The moon did her best. She carved each of these blocks of sorrow into a man or a woman. She spent the rest of her time watching out so that her other stars wouldn't fall. She spent the rest of her time holding onto whatever scraps she had left.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Stupidity , World , Way , Star

“My new knight mistress is famed for wielding sharp edges: Sword, Knife and Tongue!”

Tamora Pierce Squire

Source: Squire

“Being with her I feel a pain, like a frozen knife stuck in my chest. An awful pain, but the funny thing is I'm thankful for it. It's like that frozen pain and my very existence are one.
The pain is an anchor, mooring me”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Pain , Feeling

“Susie got your number
And Susie ain't your friend
Look who took you under
With seven inches in
Blood is on the dance floor
Blood is on the knife
Susie's got your number
And Susie says it's right.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Blood on the Dance Floor (1997)

Dance

“I walked into a gunfight with a knife to kill you, and cut you so fast when your blood spilled it was still blue.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Still Don't Give A Fuck" (Track 20).
1990s, The Slim Shady LP (1999)

“Is it progress if a cannibal uses knife and fork?”

Stanisław Jerzy Lec book Unkempt Thoughts

Czy jeżeli ludożerca je widelcem i nożem to postęp?
This inspired the title for Cannibals with Forks : The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business (1998) by John Elkington
Unkempt Thoughts (1957)

“It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife.”

Alanis Morissette (1974) Canadian-American singer-songwriter

"Ironic"
Jagged Little Pill (1995)

“A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.”

Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds

193
Stray Birds (1916)

“Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

Happiness

“You don't ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It's all about survival; it's all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed to death or keep it in…”

Nick Hornby book How to Be Good

Source: How to Be Good

Death , People , Happiness

“Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple corer.”

Terry Pratchett book Carpe Jugulum

Source: Carpe Jugulum

Fools

“Happiness is in the quiet, ordinary things. A table, a chair, a book with a paper-knife stuck between the pages. And the petal falling from the rose, and the light flickering as we sit silent.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

Books , Light , Happiness

“All round me are words, and words and words, They grow on me like leaves, they never Seem to stop their slow growing From within… But I tell my self, words Are a nuisance, beware of them, they Can be so many things, a Chasm where running feet must pause, to Look, a sea with paralyzing waves, A blast of burning air or, A knife most willing to cut your best Friend's throat… Words are a nuisance, but. They grow on me like leaves on a tree, They never seem to stop their coming, From a silence, somewhere deep within…”

Kamala Surayya (1934–2009) Indian author

Kamala Suraiyya Das (Summer in Calcutta)

Tree , Silence , Sea

“Aren’t our eyes made to be torn out, and our hearts for the same purpose? At the same time it’s really not that bad; that’s an exaggeration and a lie, everything is exaggeration, the only truth is longing, which cannot be exaggerated. But even the truth of longing is not so much its own truth; it’s really an expression of everything else, which is a lie. This sounds crazy and distorted, but it’s true.
Moreover, perhaps it isn’t love when I say you are what I love the most — you are the knife I turn inside myself, this is love.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Hat matt nicht die Augen, um sich sie auszureißen und das Herz zum gleichen Zweck? Dabei ist es ja nicht so schlimm, das ist Übertreibung und Lüge, alles ist Übertreibung, nur die Sehnsucht ist wahr, die kann man nicht übertreiben. Aber selbst die Wahrheit der Sehnsucht ist nicht so sehr ihre Wahrheit, als vielmehr der Ausdruck der Lüge alles übrigen sonst. Es klingt verdreht, aber es ist so.
Auch ist es vielleicht nicht eigentlich Liebe wenn ich sage, daß Du mir das Liebste bist; Liebe ist, daß Du mir das Messer bist, mit dem ich in mir wühle.
Letter to Milena Jesenská (14 September 1920) http://www.abyssal.de/zitate/liebe.htm
Variant translations:
In this love you are like a knife, with which I explore myself.
Letters to Milena (1952)

Love , Truth , Lie , Time

“But we must be ready to face any temporary disaster - whether or not brought on by those who will war against us to the knife — if only through such disaster can we attain our goal.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

War

“In a way, I suppose you could say my experience is quite limited. For example, I never locked Oliver Cromwell in a broom closet while singing "Waltzing Matilda." I never sawed a television in half, although I once saw Wendy O. Williams saw a guitar. I never played a decent game of jacks. I never played poker with a toothless one-eyed pirate who kept picking his teeth with a Bowie knife to distract me, while his parrot looked over my shoulder and told him what cards I had by using an elaborate code involving vomiting, chirping, and sea chanteys.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

"I'm Sorry"
Lyrics, Happy Hour (1992)

Way , Game , Singing , Sea

“Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization, and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of Mohammedan civilization. The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was fundamentally nearer to us and appealed more to our senses and tastes than that of Rome and Greece, was trampled down ( — I do not say by what sort of feet — ) Why? Because it had to thank noble and manly instincts for its origin — because it said yes to life, even to the rare and refined luxuriousness of Moorish life! The crusaders later made war on something before which it would have been more fitting for them to have grovelled in the dust — a civilization beside which even that of our nineteenth century seems very poor and very "senile." […] Intrinsically there should be no more choice between Islam and Christianity than there is between an Arab and a Jew. The decision is already reached; nobody remains at liberty to choose here. Either a man is a Chandala or he is not…. “War to the knife with Rome! Peace and friendship with Islam!”: this was the feeling, this was the act, of that great free spirit, that genius among German emperors, Frederick II.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Antichrist

Sec. 60
The Antichrist (1888)

Life , Friendship , War , Peace

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

At a Philadelphia fundraiser, as quoted in "Obama: ‘If They Bring a Knife to the Fight, We Bring a Gun’" http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/06/14/obama-if-they-bring-a-knife-to-the-fight-we-bring-a-gun/, The Wall Street Journal (14 June 2008)
2008

Fight

“Now, when suffering is always the first of the arguments marshalled against life, as its most questionable feature, it is salutary to remember the times when people made the opposite assessment, because they could not do without making people suffer and saw first-rate magic in it, a veritable seductive lure to life. Perhaps pain - I say this to comfort the squeamish - did not hurt as much then as it does now; at least, a doctor would be justified in assuming this, if he had treated a Negro (taken as a representative for primeval man) for serious internal inflammations which would drive the European with the stoutest constitution to distraction; - they do not do that to Negroes. (The curve of human capacity for pain actually does seem to sink dramatically and almost precipitously beyond the first ten thousand or ten million of the cultural elite; and for myself, I do not doubt that in comparison with one night of pain endured by a single, hysterical blue stocking, the total suffering of all the animals who have been interrogated by the knife in scientific research is as nothing.)”

Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality

Essay 2, Section 7
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

Life , Pain , People , Question

“When the native hears a speech about Western culture he pulls out his knife—or at least he makes sure it is within reach. The violence with which the supremacy of white values is affirmed and the aggressiveness which has permeated the victory of these values over the ways of life and of thought of the native mean that, in revenge, the native laughs in mockery when Western values are mentioned in front of him.”

Frantz Fanon book The Wretched of the Earth

Source: The Wretched of the Earth (1961), p. 43.

Life , Way , Revenge , Victory

“So he ignored the heat now and wondered about what he should do next. If he was going to show what he could do and really did it this time instead of saying he did when he didn't, he remembered that Bobo Kelton hung around the Rec Center a lot, every day, showing off as usual, laughing and sly, as usual. Jason looked at the clock. Ten minutes before three. Hot afternoon. He knew that Bobo would be at the Center. All he had to do was go there and wait. Across the street. A beautiful feeling of sweetness came over him. He lifted his head, let the feeling carry him for a while, like a fresh breeze in his heart. Then he went into the kitchen and took the butcher knife out of the drawer.”

Robert Cormier book The Rag and Bone Shop

Source: The Rag and Bone Shop (2000), p. 154

Beauty , Feeling , Time , Waiting

“Pointless but intense excitement holds us in TV dramas. We hear threatening music. A killer with a gun steals into the bedroom of a sleeping woman. More subliminal sounds of danger, pointlessly ominous. The woman wakes and runs into the kitchen for a knife. The cops are on the case. We watch as the criminal is pursued through night streets; shots, a death; a body falls from a roof. Then time is up, another drama begins. Now we are in a church. No, we are in a lecture hall; no again — a drawer opens in a morgue. A woman is looking for her kidnapped child. Then that ends, and we are on the veld with zebras and giraffes. Then with Lenin at a mass meeting. And suddenly we flash away to a cooking school; we are shown how to stuff a turkey. Next the Berlin Wall comes down. Or flags are burning. Or a panel is worrying about the rug crisis. More and more public themes, with less and less personal consciousness. Clearly, personal consciousness is shrinking.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

"The Distracted Public" (1990), pp. 159-160
It All Adds Up (1994)

Death , School , Music , Sleep

“The Chinese people have only family and clan solidarity; they do not have national spirit…they are just a heap of loose sand…Other men are the carving knife and serving dish; we are the fish and the meat.”

Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) Chinese physician, politician and revolutionary

China as a Heap of Loose Sand (1924)

Men , People , Family , Fish

““What are you doing here?” I asked at last.
“Probably the same thing you are.”
“What’s that?”
She looked serious. “Why don’t you tell me?”
I went back to my knife. “Sharpening my machete.”
“I'm sharpening my mind,” she said. “There is something to be done that will require an edge on both.””

Samuel R. Delany book The Einstein Intersection

Section 2
The Einstein Intersection (1967)

“May we not return to those scoundrels of old, the illustrious founders of superstition and fanaticism, who first took the knife from the altar to make victims of those who refused to be their disciples?”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Ne peut-on pas remonter jusqu’à ces anciens scélérats, fondateurs illustres de la superstition et du fanatisme, qui, les premiers, ont pris le couteau sur l’autel pour faire des victimes de ceux qui refusaient d’etre leurs disciples?
Letter to Frederick II of Prussia (December 1740), published in Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, Vol. 7 (1869) http://books.google.com/books?id=z9MWAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105#v=onepage&q&f=false, edited by Georges Avenel, p. 105; as translated by Richard Aldington
Citas

“If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

TV interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cReCQE8B5nY after 90-day moratorium (March 1964)

Way

“It has withstood the blows of a million years,
And will do so to the end. It was born when time did not exist,
And it grew up out of life,
It cut down evil’s strangling vines,
Like a slashing searing knife.”

Bobby Sands (1954–1981) Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

The Rhythm of Time
Context: There’s an inner thing in every man,
Do you know this thing my friend?
It has withstood the blows of a million years,
And will do so to the end. It was born when time did not exist,
And it grew up out of life,
It cut down evil’s strangling vines,
Like a slashing searing knife.

Life , Evil , Time

“Do all lovers feel helpless and valiant in the presence of the beloved? Helpless because the need to roll over like a pet dog is never far away. Valiant because you know you would slay a dragon with a pocket knife if you had to.”

Jeanette Winterson book The Passion

Source: The Passion (1987)

Dogs , Feeling , Lovers

“A dispassionate white sun shone at the summit of the sky. I wanted to hone myself on it till I grew saintly and thin and essential as the blade of a knife.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Sun

“Enemies will kill you with a knife in the back. Friends will kill you with kindness. Either way you're dead.”

Richard Kadrey (1957) San Francisco-based novelist, freelance writer, and photographer

Source: Kill the Dead

Way , Dead

“How do you accidentally kill a lord in his own manor?'

with a knife to the chest… well a pair of knives actually, one can never be too careful”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Variant: How do you 'accidentally' kill a noble man in his own mansion?"
"With a knife in the chest. Or, rather, a pair of knives in the chest...
Source: The Final Empire

“Raphael snapped, "This isn't funny."
"That's why no one's laughing." Jace stood, hauling Raphael upright, jamming the tip of his knife between Raphael's shoulder blades.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“Sticks and stones can break my bones and I have my Swiss Army Knife if they hit me and if I kill them it will be self defense and I won't go to prison.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“The lamb misused breeds public strife
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.”

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

Forgiveness

“Thank you, Codex, because I didn't know what a knife was.”

Cassandra Clare book The Shadowhunter's Codex

Source: The Shadowhunter's Codex

“It's a reflex. Hear a bell, get food. See an undead, throw a knife. Same thing, really.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bites

Food

“As Hazel marched down the hill, she cursed in Latin. Percy didn’t understand all of it, but he got,, and a few choice suggestions about where Octavian could stick his knife.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

Understanding

“Got tight on absinthe last night. Did knife tricks.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Night

“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

“Tessa is gone, and every moment she is gone is a knife ripping me apart from the inside.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Princess

“She knows what it's like to love someone who cannot love you back. Someone who needs you, holds you, yes, but someone who will never know that love is the knife in your heart.”

John Dufresne (1948) Novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, playwright

Source: Love Warps the Mind a Little

Love , Heart

“Imagineminus 'Mack the Knife.' That's what my life would be like without you.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Life

“Annabeth came up to me. She was dressed in black camouflage with her Celestial bronze knife strapped to her arm and her laptop bag slung over her shoulder—ready for stabbing or surfing the Internet, whichever came first.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

“I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife
inside
because there was no alternative except to hide as long
as possible---
not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance:
trying to connect.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Chance , Hurt

“Though you thrust a knife at my eyes, I will not flinch.”

Lynn Flewelling Luck in the Shadows

Source: Luck in the Shadows

“Nor is it perhaps really love when I say that for me you are the most beloved; In this love you are like a knife, with which I explore myself.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Love

“I mean, if you're asking a fellow to come out of a room so that you can dismember him with a carving knife, it's absurd to tack a 'sir' on to every sentence. The two things don't go together.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Thank You, Jeeves

Source: Thank You, Jeeves

“Trust no one at your back unless you want them to bury a knife in it.’ (Syn)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Fire

“God help me if I ever injure my back," Clayton quipped.
"God help you if you ever turn it," Whitney snapped, "for there'll surely be some heartbroken papa or cuckolded husband ready with a knife--if I don't murder you first.”

Judith McNaught book Whitney, My Love

Source: Whitney, My Love

God , Help

“Prisons are the temples where devils learn to prey. Every time we turn the key we twist the knife of fate, because every time we cage a man we close him in with hate.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Hate , Fate , Learning , Time

“No, I do not weep at the world. I'm too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) American folklorist, novelist, short story writer

How It Feels to Be Colored Me (1928)
Source: Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings
Context: I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to that sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world — I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

World , Business

“My chest hurts… It hurts. The sound of his name is like a knife in my heart.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Heart , Hurt

“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

“I often see how you sob over what you destroy, how you want to stop and just worship; and you do stop, and then a moment later you are at it again with a knife, like a surgeon.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

“Falling tears in my heart,
Falling rain on the town.
Why this long ache,
A knife in my heart.”

Paul Verlaine (1844–1896) French poet

Il pleure dans mon cœur
Comme il pleut sur la ville.
Quelle est cette langueur
Qui pénètre mon cœur?
"Il pleur dans mon cœur" line 1, from Romances sans paroles (1874); Sorrell p. 69
Source: One Hundred and One Poems by Paul Verlaine: A Bilingual Edition

Tear , Heart

“If you come, you better come in force because I will kill every single one of you. My hand won't shake, my aim won't falter. My face will be the last thing you'll see before you die." I jammed my knife into the table and walked out.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

“Way out in the country tonight he could smell the pumpkins ripening toward the knife and the triangle eye and the singeing candle.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine

Way , Singing , Country

“2 November. This morning, for the first time in a long time, the joy again of imagining a knife twisted in my heart.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

Imagination , Time , Heart , Joy

“You're cute when you're worried," she muttered. "Your eyebrows get all scrunched together."

You aregoing to die while I owe you a favor," I said. "Why did you take that knife?"

You would've done the same for me.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

“But in life, a tragedy is not one long scream. It includes everything that led up to it. Hour after trivial hour, day after day, year after year, and then the sudden moment: the knife stab, the shell burst, the plummet of the car from a bridge.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Life , Cars

“Hi, I'm one of the knife-carrying hooligans you met last night in Pandemonium? I'm afraid I made a bad impression and was hoping you'd give me a chance to make it up to- "
"SIMON!”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Clary held the phone away from her ear as he cracked up laughing. "That is so not funny!"
Simon and Clary, pg. 19
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

Hope , Chance , Night

“When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“There could be few men whose love for a woman had been written on his face with a knife.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkspell

Love , Men

“I opened myself to you only to be skinned alive. The more vulnerable I became, the faster and more deft your knife. Knowing what was happening, still I stayed and let you carve more. That's how much I loved you. That's how much.”

Rabih Alameddine (1959) Lebanese-American painter and writer.

Source: I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters

Love

“No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.”

Steven Brust (1955) American fantasy and science fiction author

“An unprovoked head butt is like bringing a sawed-off shotgun to a knife fight.”

Lee Child (1954) British thriller writer

Fight

“But magic is neither good nor evil. It is a tool, like a knife. Is a knife evil? Only if the wielder is evil.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Evil

“A woman's mind is her most precious weapon. It must not be employed clumsily or prematurely. Much like the aforementioned knife in the back, a clever gibe is most effective when it is unanticipated.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

“You made your own jean shorts… with a butter knife?”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

“He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder.”

Tad Williams Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn

Author’s Warning
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

Heart

“… this beginning motion, this first time when a sail truly filled and the boat took life and knifed across the lake under perfect control, this was so beautiful it stopped my breath…”

Gary Paulsen (1939) American writer and musher

Source: Caught by the Sea

Life , Beauty , Time , Perfection

“Not responding is a response--we are equally responsible for what we don't do. In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Eating Animals

Source: Eating Animals

Animals

“Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black. She has a knife, knife, knife, stuck in her back, back, back. She cannot breathe, breathe, breathe. She cannot cry, cry, cry. Thats why she begs, begs, begs. She begs to die, die, die..”

Laurie Faria Stolarz (1972) American writer

Source: White Is for Magic

Cry

“For me, it's better to wake up with a paintbrush than a knife in my hand.
-Peeta”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

“Where are you anyway? (Acheron)
I don't know. I hear some godawful kind of music from outside, horns blaring, and I'm in a house with a Mohawk cuckoo bird, a transvestite, and a knife-wielding lunatic. (Valerius)
Why are you at Tabitha's? (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Seize the Night

Music , Bird , Housing

“Here stands a girl clutching a knife. There is grease on the stove, blood in the air, and angry words piled in the corners. We are trained not to see it, not to see any of it…. Someone just ripped off my eyelids.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Girl , Training

“The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and extinguished by a sharp blow or by insufficient oxygen.”

Steven Pinker book How the Mind Works

Source: How the Mind Works

Soul

“I put my head
out of my window and see
how much the wind’s knife
wants to slice it off.
On this unseen
guillotine, I’ve placed
the eyeless head
of all my desires.”

Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director

“A woman’s eyes cut deeper than a knife.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Two Rivers saying
(15 October 1994)

“Slice a pear and you will find that its flesh is incandescent white. It glows with inner light. Those who carry a knife and a pear are never afraid of the dark.”

Yann Martel book Beatrice and Virgil

Source: Beatrice and Virgil

Light

“I don't know if you know it, J. B., but you're the sort of fellow who causes hundreds to fall under suspicion when he's found stabbed in his library with a paper-knife of Oriental design.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

“Is a knife evil? Only if the wielder is evil.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Evil

“What kind of knife is this?” Locke held a rounded buttering utensil up for Chains’ inspection. “It’s all wrong. You couldn’t kill anyone with this.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora

“We had and incident. I took care of it."
"Really." Jace's voice dripped sarcasm. "Do you even know how to use that knife, Clarissa? Without poking a hole in yourself or any innocent bystanders?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

“She carried a knife inside of herself now, one that was always cutting her. She could feel it every time she swallowed, every time her thoughts strayed from the splendor of the wild.”

Scott Westerfeld book Specials

Source: Specials

Feeling , Time

“I am so tired of waiting.
Aren’t you,
for the world to become good
and beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
and cut the world in two —
and see what worms are eating
at the rind.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

World , Beauty , Waiting

“The smile was so painfully swift and fleeting that it was like the flash of a knife.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Capricorn

Source: Tropic of Capricorn

Smile

“I seem to have excalibured this knife.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Enchanted Glass

Source: Enchanted Glass

“I tell ya, I grew up in a tough neighborhood. The other night a guy pulled a knife on me. I could see it wasn't a real professional job. There was butter on it.”

Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American actor and comedian

Source: It's Not Easy Bein' Me: A Lifetime of No Respect But Plenty of Sex and Drugs (2004), p. 16

Guy , Night

“Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Love

“What happened to you?" she asked.
"I got hit in the side."
"With what?"
"A knife.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Awakened

“Because I "needed" them for school I had previously extorted a chemistry set, a soldering iron a magnifining glass, a tape recorder, a fountain pen, a Stanley knife, a compass, a torch, a set of oil paints, a speedometer for my bike, some sea monkeys, an Electra set, a halliwell's, a subscription to weapons and warfare and a ticket to the opening night of the Hamilton film festival. I'm sure if I'd claimed I needed one for biology she'd have hooked me up with a prostitute.”

Tony Martin (comedian) (1964) New Zealand comedian and writer

a nest of occasionals (book).

School , Painting , Sea , Night

“All Nine often used to come to me, I mean the Muses:
But I ignored them: my girl was in my arms.
Now I’ve left my sweetheart: and they’ve left me,
And I roll my eyes, seeking a knife or rope.
But Heaven is full of gods: You came to aid me:
Greetings, Boredom, mother of the Muse.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Epigram 27
Venetian Epigrams (1790)

God , Girl

“We often hear, “Rape is rape, right?” No. A stranger forcing himself on a woman at knife point is different from a man and woman having sex while drunk and having regrets the morning. What is different? When a woman agrees to a date, she does not make a choice to be sexual, but she does make a choice to explore sexual possibilities. The woman makes no such choice with a stranger or an acquaintance.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 315.

Sex

“Tarzan of the Apes had decided to mark his evolution from the lower orders in every possible manner, and nothing seemed to him a more distinguishing badge of manhood than ornaments and clothing.
To this end, therefore, he collected the various arm and leg ornaments he had taken from the black warriors who had succumbed to his swift and silent noose, and donned them all after the way he had seen them worn.
About his neck hung the golden chain from which depended the diamond encrusted locket of his mother, the Lady Alice. At his back was a quiver of arrows slung from a leathern shoulder belt, another piece of loot from some vanquished black.
About his waist was a belt of tiny strips of rawhide fashioned by himself as a support for the home-made scabbard in which hung his father's hunting knife. The long bow which had been Kulonga's hung over his left shoulder.
The young Lord Greystoke was indeed a strange and war-like figure, his mass of black hair falling to his shoulders behind and cut with his hunting knife to a rude bang upon his forehead, that it might not fall before his eyes.
His straight and perfect figure, muscled as the best of the ancient Roman gladiators must have been muscled, and yet with the soft and sinuous curves of a Greek god, told at a glance the wondrous combination of enormous strength with suppleness and speed.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 13 : His Own Kind

God , War , Way , Home

“Senator McGovern is very sincere when he says that he will try to cut the military budget by 30%. And this is to drive a knife in the heart of Israel… Jews don't like big military budgets. But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States… American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don't want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel.”

Irving Kristol (1920–2009) American columnist, journalist, and writer

Congress Bi-Weekly (1973), published by the American Jewish Congress. Quoted by Philip Weiss in Mondoweiss (May 23, 2007) http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2007/05/30_years_ago_ne.html.
1970s

Heart , Sincerity

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

4 quotes from: 'The Color in my Painting'
Homage to the square' (1964)

Color , Painting , Dependency