Quotes about spike (56 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“How sweet the air does smell — even the air of a back-street in the suburbs — after the shut-in, subfaecal stench of the spike!”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 27, on the morning after Orwell is let out of his first tramps' accommodation, or 'spike'.

“Before, he had fought against the money code, and yet he had clung to his wretched remnant of decency. But now it was precisely from decency that he wanted to escape. He wanted to go down, deep down, into some world where decency no longer mattered; to cut the strings of his self-respect, to submerge himself—to sink, as Rosemary had said. It was all bound up in his mind with the thought of being under ground. He liked to think of the lost people, the under-ground people: tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes. It is a good world that they inhabit, down there in their frowzy kips and spikes. He liked to think that beneath the world of money there is that great sluttish underworld where failure and success have no meaning; a sort of kingdom of ghosts where all are equal. That was where he wished to be, down in the ghost-kingdom, below ambition. It comforted him somehow to think of the smoke-dim slums of South London sprawling on and on, a huge graceless wilderness where you could lose yourself forever.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 10

Money , People , World , Failure

“He tapped one of the ivory spikes between his legs and said, 'There be as good a way to lose your manhood as ever I've seen'.”

Christopher Paolini book Eldest

Source: Eldest

Way

“For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" — bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez — tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Actual source: A letter to The Economist (16 January 1971), written by one M.J. Shields (or M.J. Yilz, by the end of the letter). The letter is quoted in full in one of Willard Espy's Words at Play books. This was a modified version of a piece "Meihem in ce Klasrum", published in the September 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine. http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j31/satires.php
Misattributed

Memory , Parting

“What does “A. D.” signify? That commemorates an inmate of this lunatic asylum we call Earth who was nailed to a wooden cross by a bunch of other inmates. With him still conscious, they hammered spikes through his wrists and insteps, and into the wood. Then they set the cross upright, so he dangled up there where even the shortest person in the crowd could see him writhing this way and that. Can you imagine people doing such a thing to a person?”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Cold Turkey (2004)

People , Way , Imagination , Personality

“Hey Grover! Thorn's kidnapping us! He's a poisonous spike-throwing maniac! Help!”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Help

“By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Support , Time

“But this…this kid wasn’t dead yet. Makes no sense to me. (Bubba)
Maybe someone spiked his Wheaties? (Nick)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

Sense , Dead

“If you're just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television's electric plug-wire, wrap a spike around it, and then stick it back into the wall. See what blows, and how far. Just an idea.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Idea

“William untucked the covers and stood, making a mental list of everything he'd need for the coming trip. A few blades, serrated and non serrated. A vial of acid. A bone saw. A spiked paddle. A cat-o'-nine-tails. And a bag of Gummy Bears.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Secret

Cats

“We'd even devised the Buffy scale of life relationships: you start off wanting Xander, spend your twenties going out with Spike and setttle down with giles.”

Jenny Colgan (1972) British writer

Life

“Your spikes have gone floppy”

Darren Shan Demon Thief

Source: Demon Thief

“Ben yanked Hi sideways as spikes snapped from the wall…Once again, only Ben’s reflexes had saved him. “Please stop doing that!” Ben barked. “Please keep doing that!” Hi warbled.”

Kathy Reichs book Seizure

Source: Seizure

“[He] saw that a peculiar expression had come into his nephew's face; an expression a little like that of a young hindu fakir who having settled himself on his first bed of spikes is beginning to wish that he had chosen one of the easier religions.”

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

Religion

“Even the trip throught the Portal had not disarranged Magnus's hair spikes. He tugged on one proudly. "Check it out", he said to Isabelle.
"Magic?"
"Hair gel. $3.99 at Ricky's.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“Basil Stag Hare tut-tutted severely as he remarked to Ambrose Spike, 'Tch, tch. Dreadful table manners. Just look at those three wallahs, kicking up a hullaballoo like that! Eating's a serious business.”

Brian Jacques Redwall

Source: Redwall

Business

“He gripped her nape. "I fuckin' love you, Regin!" Rain spiked his lashes as he gazed down at her, commanding her,
"Love Me Back”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Love

“Spike: I had a muscle cramp. Buffy was, uh, helping.
Tara: A muscle cramp… in your pants?
Spike: What? It's a thing.”

Amber Benson (1977) actress from the United States

I Was Made to Love You [5.15]
Willow & Tara (2000-2002)

Help

“He (Spike) probably fell in love with Buffy when he first saw her, but didn't admit it to himself because he was already in love with Dru…”

James Marsters (1962) American actor

James Marsters, 2002 [citation needed]

Love

“Baseball people are generally allergic to new ideas; it took years to persuade them to put numbers on uniforms, and it is the hardest thing in the world to get Major League Baseball to change anything—even spikes on a new pair of shoes—but they will eventually…they are bound to.”

Branch Rickey (1881–1965) American baseball player and coach

In 1954.
Source: http://www.northsidebaseball.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=45283&start=25&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

People , World , Shoe , Idea

“There in Rangoon I realized that the gods
were enemies, just like God,
of the poor human being.
Gods
in alabaster extended
like white whales,
gods gilded like spikes,
serpent gods entwining
the crime of being born,
naked and elegant buddhas
smiling at the cocktail party
of empty eternity
like Christ on his horrible cross,
all of them capable of anything,
of imposing on us their heaven,
all with torture or pistol
to purchase piety or burn our blood,
fierce gods made by men
to conceal their cowardice,
and there it was all like that,
the whole earth reeking of heaven,
and heavenly merchandise.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Allí en Rangoon comprendí que los dioses
eran tan enemigos como Dios
del pobre ser humano.
Dioses
de alabastro tendidos
como ballenas blancas,
dioses dorados como las espigas,
dioses serpientes enroscados
al crimen de nacer,
budhas desnudos y elegantes
sonriendo en el coktail
de la vacía eternidad
como Cristo en su cruz horrible,
todos dispuestos a todo,
a imponernos su cielo,
todos con llagas o pistola
para comprar piedad o quemarnos la sangre,
dioses feroces del hombre
para esconder la cobardía,
y allí todo era así,
toda la tierra olía a cielo,
a mercadería celeste.
Religión en el Este (Religion in the East) from Memorial of Isla Negra [Memorial de Isla Negra] (1964), trans. by Anthony Kerrigan in Selected Poems by Pablo Neruda [Houghton Mifflin, 1990, ISBN 0-395-54418-1] (p. 463).

Men , God , Smile , Christ

“Her left hand reminded her of its existence, and she looked round to see what was scratching the heel of her hand. It was a tiny thistle, crouched in a crack in the sandstone, barely lifting its colorless spikes into the light and wind. It nodded stiffly as the wind blew, resisting the wind, rooted in rock. She gazed at it for a long time.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, Tehanu (1990), Chapter 4, "Kalessin"

Light , Time

“My dad hates umbrellas,” said Deeba, swinging her own. “When it rains he always says the same thing. ‘I do not believe the presence of moisture in the air is sufficient reason to overturn society’s usual sensible taboo against wielding spiked clubs at eye level.’”

China Miéville book Un Lun Dun

Source: Un Lun Dun (2007), Chapter 3, “The Visiting Smoke” (p. 11)

Hate

“You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century—when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all—and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?”

Thomas Friedman (1953) American journalist and author

The Earth Is Full, New York Times, June 7, 2011, June 26, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/opinion/08friedman.html?_r=3&ref=opinion,

World , Food , Nature , Thinking

“Funerals in México are also about drowning sorrow with liquor. The coffee is spiked with tequila”

Rigoberto González (1970) American writer

Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa (2006)

Coffee

“The large gray spiked form rising from the bottom of the picture is to me the symbol of death and ruin. And finally the black ovoid form is the symbol of fire, lava and destruction.”

William Baziotes (1912–1963) American painter

in a letter to Alfred H. Barr, Jr. 6 November, 1955; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism, Barbara Hess, Taschen, Köln, 2006, p. 34
Baziotes' quote is referring to his painting 'Pompeii', Baziotes painted in 1955
1950s

Death

“Spike's was a very simple philosophy when we met him. I think that now he is forming one, and I think that the best thing that he has come up with so far is that a lot of being human is about degradation and pain and humiliation. I think he's starting to understand that for the first time. I think he got away from that by becoming a vampire and that's why he was so keen to stop being human, but he's getting back to being human now.”

James Marsters (1962) American actor

Spike's philosophies about life http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/buffy/interviews/marsters/page3.shtml

Pain , Understanding , Thinking , Time

“Many of my Hamptstead friends may remember this 'young lady' [an ash tree] at the entrance to the village. Her fate was distressing, for it is scarcely too much to say that she died of a broken heart. I made this drawing [Study of Trees, pencil on paper, circa 1821] when she was in full health and beauty; on passing some times afterwards, I saw, to my grief, that a wretched board had been nailed to her side, on which was written in large letters: 'All vagrants and beggars will be dealt with according to law.' The tree seemed to have felt the disgrace, for even then some of the top branches had withered. Two long spike nails had been driven far into her side. In another year one half became paralysed, and not long after the other shared the same fate, and this beautiful creature was cut down to a stump, just high enough to hold the board.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from Constable's Lecture, given at Hamptstead (July 1836), as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable, Tate Gallery Publications, London 1993, p. 391
1830s, his lectures History of Landscape Painting (1836)

Fate , Health , Law , Beauty

“I'm not really a collage artist like Quentin Tarantino or Wes Anderson. I'm not like those other guys, Spike Jonze, too, guys who watch things and take notes. I'm trapped in my own stubborn world over-and-over, looking for a similar insight, a similar aesthetic, a similar point of view.”

Vincent Gallo (1961) American film director, writer, model, actor and musician

Film Freak Central Interview

World , Guy

“Them cool grays, thats monday, them space jams, thats tuesday, them spike lee's, thats wednesday, 23's on my Benz”

Game (rapper) (1979) American rapper, record producer and actor from California

Bottles and Rockin J's Featuring DJ Khaled, Busta Rhymes, Rick Ross, Fabolous, Lil Wayne, and Teyana Taylor
California Republic (2012)

“Welcome to the early twenty-first century, human.
It’s night in Milton Keynes, sunrise in Hong Kong. Moore’s Law rolls inexorably on, dragging humanity toward the uncertain future. The planets of the solar system have a combined mass of approximately 2 x 1027 kilograms. Around the world, laboring women produce forty-five thousand babies a day, representing 1023 MIPS of processing power. Also around the world, fab lines casually churn out thirty million microprocessors a day, representing 1023 MIPS. In another ten months, most of the MIPS being added to the solar system will be machine-hosted for the first time. About ten years after that, the solar system’s installed processing power will nudge the critical 1 MIPS per gram threshold—one million instructions per second per gram of matter. After that, singularity—a vanishing point beyond which extrapolating progress becomes meaningless. The time remaining before the intelligence spike is down to single-digit years …”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 2 (“Troubadour”), pp. 38-39

Women , World , Law , Intelligence

“Richard resumed reading the T’Rain Gazette, a daily newspaper (electronic format, of course)… which summarized what had been going on all over T’Rain during the preceding twenty-four hours:
Notable achievements, wars, duels, sackings, mortality statistics, plagues, famines…untoward spikes in commodity prices.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 1
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

War , Reading

“Women have crucified the Mary Wollstonecrafts, the Fanny Wrights, and the George Sands of all ages. Men mock us with the fact and say we are ever cruel to each other… If this present woman must be crucified, let men drive the spikes.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

Letter to Lucretia Mott (1872-04-01).

Women , Men , Age

“It’s always a joy to work with Spike. He creates an environment that’s wonderful for creativity. People leave their egos at the door and just we all come from different genres and different levels within the business. It’s kind of exciting to finally meet people like Common, John Cusack, Jennifer Hudson and work with them, and see what the flavors are. You know the most seasoned veterans, we always want to see what the young guys, the young crew, has to offer. If they learn something and if they bring something to the table or if they should just be written off.”

Wesley Snipes (1962) film actor, Martial artist, film producer

Wesley Snipes, Comic Con: Wesley Snipes On ‘Blade’ Marvel Talks, ‘The Player’ & Spike Lee http://deadline.com/2015/07/wesley-snipes-blade-comic-con-interview-blade-the-player-1201472733/, Deadline Hollywood, 9 July 2015

People , Guy , Business , Learning

“Fellini has sometimes been accused of not being interested in the work of other directors but I never found this accusation to hold true. The Federico I knew was not only a voracious reader but extremely interested in hearing about international directors, most notably, Nanni Moretti, Pedro Almodovar, David Lynch, Spike Lee, Akira Kurosawa, David Cronenberg, Wim Wenders, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick. Clearly, part of the pleasure of discussing these directors was the stimulus for new ideas that their latest films gave him. Although we never explored Portuguese film in any depth, the films of Manoel de Oliveira and Joao César Monteiro genuinely fascinated Federico. At the urging of Mastroianni, he went to see A Divina Comédia (1991), Oliveira’s superb allegory about Western civilization, and returned enthralled. He had long been obsessed by the theme of insane asylums and Oliveira’s masterful blend of philosophy and religion appealed to him at a time in his life when such questions as death and resurrection had become pressing concerns. I do not know where or in what format Federico saw Monteiro’s Recordaçoes de Casa Amarela (1989) but it was a film he described as “deliriously eccentric, a satirical bizarrie that Bunuel would have adored."”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On Fellini’s favorite directors
Federico Fellini: Sou um Grande Mentiroso (2008)

Life , Death , Pleasure , Religion

“If the doctrine of free-will has raised up fanatics and persecutors, who, assuming that men may be good under all conditions if they merely wish to be so, have sought to persuade other men's wills with threats, fines, imprisonments, torture, the spike, the wheel, the axe, the fagot, in order to make them good and save them against their obdurate wills; if the doctrine of Spiritualism, the soul supreme, has done this, the doctrine of Materialistic Determinism has produced shifting, self-excusing, worthless, parasitical characters, who are this now and that at some other time, and anything and nothing upon principle. "My conditions have made me so," they cry, and there is no more to be said; poor mirror-ghosts! how could they help it!”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

The Dominant Idea (1910)

Men , Soul , Time , Help

“Yeah, just recently Ted Lilly was pitching in the first inning against the Pittsburgh Pirates, and he slipped twice on two bunt plays. Anyways, Lou [Piniella] came out to check on him and asked him if he had his metal spikes on and he did. Lou then said well do you have any other cleats in the locker room and Ted said, "Skip, your zippers down." Lou was really embarrassed about that. He turns to do something about it, but then realized that he was on national TV and realized he couldn't do anything. That was a very awkward, but funny story.”

Michael Barrett (1976) baseball catcher and manager

“Half the campus was designed by Bottom the Weaver, half by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Benton had been endowed with one to begin with, and had smiled and sweated and and spoken for the other. A visitor looked under black beams, through leaded casements (past apple boughs, past box, past chairs like bath-tubs on broomsticks) to a lawn ornamented with one of the statues of David Smith; in the months since the figure had been put in its place a shrike had deserted for it a neighboring thorn tree, and an archer had skinned her leg against its farthest spike. On the table in the President’s waiting-room there were copies of Town and Country, the Journal of the History of Ideas, and a small magazine—a little magazine—that had no name. One walked by a mahogany hat-rack, glanced at the coat of arms on an umbrella-stand, and brushed with one’s sleeve something that gave a ghostly tinkle—four or five black and orange ellipsoids, set on grey wires, trembled in the faint breeze of the air-conditioning unit: a mobile. A cloud passed over the sun, and there came trailing from the gymnasium, in maillots and blue jeans, a melancholy procession, four dancers helping to the infirmary a friend who had dislocated her shoulder in the final variation of The Eye of Anguish.”

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 1: “The President, Mrs., and Derek Robbins”, p. 3; opening paragraph of novel

Smile , History , Idea , Tree

“An oil crisis looms, prices are spiking — and our president is extolling algae. After Solyndra, Keystone and promises of seaweed in their gas tanks, Americans sense a president so ideologically antipathetic to fossil fuels — which we possess in staggering abundance — that he is utterly unserious about the real world of oil in which the rest of us live.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Column, March 15, 2012, "Obama's oil flimflam" http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer031512.php3#.U4T9R8JOWUk at jewishworldreview.com.
2010s, 2012

World , Sense

“No one in the history of the written word, not even William MacGonagall, or Spike Milligan or D. H. Lawrence, is so wide open to damaging quotation. Try this, more or less at random: 'A murderer in the moment of his murder could feel a sense of beauty and perfection as complete as the transport of a saint.' Or this: Film is a phenomenon whose resemblance to death has been ignored for too long. His italics.
On every page Mailer will come up with a formulation both grandiose and crass. This is expected of him. It is also expected of the reviewer to introduce a lingering 'yet' or 'however' at some point, and say that 'somehow' Mailer's 'fearless honesty' redeems his notorious excesses. He isn't frightened of sounding outrageous; he isn't frightened of making a fool of himself; and, above all, he isn't frightened of being boring. Well, fear has its uses. Perhaps he ought to be a little less frightened of being frightened.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Review of The Essential Mailer by Norman Mailer, p. 267
The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 (2001)

Death , Fear , Beauty , Fools

“The human population growth that has taken place over the past few hundred years resembles nothing so much as the spikes that occur in the numbers of rabbits, house mice and plague rats. Like them, it can only be short-lived.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Human: Disseminated Primatemaia (p. 9)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Past , Housing

“I have called these animals destriers, borrowing an old word for war-horses. I've given them clawed feet instead of hoofs because I think the genetic engineers will give them claws too. The horse's hoofs seem to be an evolutionary mistake. To speak in Lamarckian terms, the horse has lengthened its legs by standing on its toes until it has ended up standing on one toenail. […] Cheetahs, wolves, and greyhounds all have nonretractile claws that serve them as their spikes serve runners and baseball players. Racehorses could not run as fast as they do if they did not wear aluminum or magnesium shoes.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

"Cavalry in the Age of the Autarch", in Castle of the Otter (1982), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

War , Shoe , Thinking , Animals

““Myth, Symbol, and Tradition” was the phrase I originally wrote at the top of the page, for editors like large, cloudy titles. Then I looked at what I had written and, wordlessly, the words reproached me. I hope I had the grace to blush at my own presumption and their portentousness. How could I, if I lived for a thousand years, attempt to cover more than a hectare of that enormous landscape?
So, I let out the air, in a manner of speaking, dwindled to my appropriate size, and gave myself over to that process which, for lack of a more erudite term, I have coined the phrase “Thinking is linking.” I thought of Kerenyi — “Mythology occupies a higher position in the bios, the Existence, of a people in which it is still alive than poetry, storytelling or any other art.” And of Malinowski — “Myth is not merely a story told, but a reality lived.” And, along with those, the word “Pollen,” the most pervasive substance in the world, kept knocking at my ear. Or rather, not knocking, but humming. What hums? What buzzes? What travels the world? Suddenly I found what I sought. “What the bee knows,” I told myself. “That is what I’m after.”
But even as I patted my back, I found myself cursing, and not for the first time, the artful trickiness of words, their capriciousness, their lack of conscience. Betray them and they will betray you. Be true to them and, without compunction, they will also betray you, foxily turning all the tables, thumbing syntactical noses. For — note bene! — if you speak or write about What The Bee Knows, what the listener, or the reader, will get — indeed, cannot help but get — is Myth, Symbol, and Tradition! You see the paradox? The words, by their very perfidy — which is also their honorable intention — have brought us to where we need to be. For, to stand in the presence of paradox, to be spiked on the horns of dilemma, between what is small and what is great, microcosm and macrocosm, or, if you like, the two ends of the stick, is the only posture we can assume in front of this ancient knowledge — one could even say everlasting knowledge.”

P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist

"What the Bee Knows" in Parabola : The Magazine of Myth and Tradition, Vol. VI, No. 1 (February 1981); later published in What the Bee Knows : Reflections on Myth, Symbol, and Story (1989)

People , World , Hope , Art

“Ramadan typically brings a spike in violence in Middle East. I get grumpy when I don't eat - but I don't blow things up. Religion of peace?”

Katie Hopkins (1975) English media personality and newspaper columnist

Katie Hopkins : her most offensive quotes http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/big-brother/11332631/Katie-Hopkins-most-offensive-quotes.html Daily Telegraph, 8 January 2015
Katie Hopkins's most outrageous quotes http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/Katie-s-outrageous-quotes/story-27492772-detail/story.html Western Daily Press, 28 July 2015

Peace , Religion

“[Spike] is a sadist and he is never happier than when he is hurting people or killing people, but he is truly, sincerely, deeply in love with Drusilla.”

James Marsters (1962) American actor

Vampire Bytes by Sue Schneider (Feb '99) http://www.morethanspike.com/articles.php?ID=135

Love , People , Hurt , Sincerity

“But just like voices, thoughts are underpinned by physical stuff. We know this because alterations to the brain change the kinds of thoughts we can think. In a state of deep sleep, there are no thoughts. When the brain transitions into dream sleep, there are unbidden, bizarre thoughts. During the day we enjoy our normal, well-accepted thoughts, which people enthusiastically modulate by spiking the chemical cocktails of the brain with alcohol, narcotics, cigarettes, coffee, or physical exercise. The state of the physical material determines the state of the thoughts. And the physical material is absolutely necessary for normal thinking to tick along. If you were to injure your pinkie in an accident you’d be distressed, but your conscious experience would be no different. By contrast, if you were to damage an equivalently sized piece of brain tissue, this might change your capacity to understand music, name animals, see colors, judge risk, make decisions, read signals from your body, or understand the concept of a mirror—thereby unmasking the strange, veiled workings of the machinery beneath. Our hopes, dreams, aspirations, fears, comic instincts, great ideas, fetishes, senses of humor, and desires all emerge from this strange organ—and when the brain changes, so do we. So although it’s easy to intuit that thoughts don’t have a physical basis, that they are something like feathers on the wind, they in fact depend directly on the integrity of the enigmatic, three-pound mission control center.”

David Eagleman (1971) neuroscientist and author

Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain

People , Alcohol , Fear , Dreams

“Our goal is to inflict pain. It is not good enough to win; it has to be a painful and devastating defeat. We're sending a message here. It is like when the king would take his opponent's head and spike it on a pole for everyone to see.”

Grover Norquist (1956) Conservative Lobbyist

from the National Review, quoted in The Republican Noise Machine by David Brock, Crown Publishers 2004, pg. 50
2004

Pain

“You have seen bigger horses than his thirteen and a half, perhaps fourteen hands, his nine hundred pounds. You have seen handsomer profiles than this Roman nose, slightly convex. Burrs cling to his long sweeping tail. His coat is dark and unglossed. Yet look again, while he is still, for he will not be still long. Sense the vitality in those muscles, trembling beneath the skin; see the pride in that high head, hear the haughty command to his voice. For this is a wild horse, my friend. Once he claimed the western range. Then they took his range away from him. But nothing, no one claims him. He feels the wind and the air with his nose, with his ears, with his very soul, and what he feels is good. He tosses his head, once, quickly, and behind him his harem of six mares trot up to join him, and behind them, a yearling colt, a filly and two stork-legged foals. Coats dusty and chewed, tails spiked with bits of the desert, sage and nettle and leftover pine needles from winter climbs down from timberland. The Barb-nosed stallion led his family down to the waterhole. Not Barb from barbed wire, though perhaps the chewed skin was from barbed wire, but Barb from the Spanish horses from which he descended, brought to the New World over four hundred years ago, from the Barbary states of North Africa, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Fez, Tripoli. Indians stole them from the Spaniards; the Barbs stole themselves free from the Indians. Running wild, a few still run free.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From Running Wild (1973) by Hano, p. 10
Other Topics

World , Family , Feeling , Soul

“the Spike said. “I think we have just gotten down to a gritty—or at least a nitty.””

Samuel R. Delany book Triton

“Ah ha!”
Source: Triton (1976), Chapter 3 “Avoiding Kangaroos” (p. 123)

Thinking

“As soon as baseball becomes a job, as soon as I stop caring, as soon as the smile goes away, I'll hang up my spikes and do something else.”

David Wright (1982) American baseball player

[Sports Illustrated, http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/preview/siexclusive/2006/pr/subs/siexclusive/05/22/wright0529/?url=http%253A%252F%252Fpremium.si.cnn.com%252Fpr%252Fsubs2%252Fsiexclusive%252F2006%252Fpr%252Fsubs%252Fsiexclusive%252F05%252F22%252Fwright0529%252F, Prince of the City, Lidz, Franz, 2006-05-22]

Smile

“It would surprise no impartial observer if the motto “In God we trust” were one day expunged from the coins of the republic by the Junkers at Washington, and the far more appropriate word, “verboten,” substituted. Nor would it astound any save the most romantic if, at the same time, the goddess of liberty were taken off the silver dollars to make room for a bas-relief of a policeman in a spiked helmet.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

The American Credo: A Contribution toward the Interpretation of the National Mind (1920)
1920s
Context: The American of today, in fact, probably enjoys less personal liberty than any other man of Christendom, and even his political liberty is fast succumbing to the new dogma that certain theories of government are virtuous and lawful, and others abhorrent and felonious. Laws limiting the radius of his free activity multiply year by year: It is now practically impossible for him to exhibit anything describable as genuine individuality, either in action or in thought, without running afoul of some harsh and unintelligible penalty. It would surprise no impartial observer if the motto “In God we trust” were one day expunged from the coins of the republic by the Junkers at Washington, and the far more appropriate word, “verboten,” substituted. Nor would it astound any save the most romantic if, at the same time, the goddess of liberty were taken off the silver dollars to make room for a bas-relief of a policeman in a spiked helmet. Moreover, this gradual (and, of late, rapidly progressive) decay of freedom goes almost without challenge; the American has grown so accustomed to the denial of his constitutional rights and to the minute regulation of his conduct by swarms of spies, letter-openers, informers and agents provocateurs that he no longer makes any serious protest.

God , Time

“Wearing their wits, which means their laughter,
As their crown. Set free upon the earth
By simple gifts of knowing how mere mirth can cut the bonds
And pull the blood spikes out”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Christ, Old Student in a New School (1972)
Context: Ten thousand times a million sons of sons move
Through one great and towering town
Wearing their wits, which means their laughter,
As their crown. Set free upon the earth
By simple gifts of knowing how mere mirth can cut the bonds
And pull the blood spikes out;
Their conversation shouts of "Fool!"

Laughter

“Vampires can’t exist. There’d be detailed records in the archives; they couldn’t possibly evade detection by the state for any significant period. Besides which…there’d be corpses everywhere. Human blood is a poor nutrient source; it’s about 60 percent plasma by volume and only provides about 900 calories per liter, so your hypothetical blood-sucking fiend is going to have to drink about two and a half liters per day. Those calories don’t come in the form of useful stuff like glucose and fat: it’s mostly protein from circulating red blood cells. Dracula would have to exsanguinate a victim every day just to stay alive, and would suffer from chronic ketoacidosis. The total number of intentional homicides for the whole country is around 700 a year; a single vampire would cause a 50 percent spike in the murder rate. Or they’d have to take transfusion-sized donations about two thousand times a year.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Rhesus Chart (2014), Chapter 1, “Prologue: One Month Ago” (p. 2; ellipsis represents elision of one sentence of description)

Drink , Time , Suffering , Country

“Nobody is a born killer. And nobody ever forgets the first time they get laid, nor the first time they spike somebody.”

Steve Perry (1947) American writer

Source: The Ramal Extraction (2012), Chapter 16

Forgetting , Time

“He supported himself at odd jobs until he won himself a place on the Olean (New York) professional team at sixteen and never again willingly took orders from any man. Although he was short and weighed barely 155 pounds, he held far bigger base runners back by the belt, blocked them, tripped them, spiked them - and rarely complained when they did the same to him.”

John McGraw (1873–1934) American baseball player, manager

Ibid.

Support

“I very much lament for what has happened to the groves in Madhura. The coconut trees have all been cut and in their place are to be seen rows of iron spikes with human skulls dangling at the points.”

Gangadevi Indian princess and Sanskrit poetess

Source: Gangadevi. On the condition of Madurai under the Muslim rule. Chattopadhyaya, Brajadulal (2006), Studying Early India: Archaeology, Texts and Historical Issues, Anthem Press, ISBN 978-1-84331-132-4

Tree