Bled Quotes

My life has been like a battlefield, a war that could never be won unless I had her with me, and the day she died my battlefront stepped down and threw away their shields, allowing the gunshots to slip through the second her heart stopped beating. From that moment onwards I was left wounded, and for those seventeen years without her my wounds bled-wounds no stitch could ever repair. ~ Rebecah McManus

When Godric banished Fairweather and Tune, they all three bled for it, and part of Godric snaked off too, nevermore to come again. And it's Godric's flesh that Ailred's cough cleaves to like an axe. And when brave Mouse went down off Wales, he bore to the bottom the cut of Godric's sharp farewell. And when Gillian vanished in a Dover wood, she took with her all but the husk of Godric's joy. ~ Frederick Buechner

Sitting in the wicker rocking chair with her interrupted work in her lap, Amaranta watched Aureliano José, his chin covered with foam, stropping his razor to give himself his first shave. His blackheads bled and he cut his upper lip as he tried to shape a mustache of blond fuzz, and when it was all over he looked the same as before, but the laborious process gave Amaranta the feeling that she had begun to grow old at that moment. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

…The heavens could not bear my debt
And wrote me as a madman in my fate.
But lovers bled their hearts
And on the face of the Beloved
Did a beauty spot create.

The fire that burns
In the flame of the lamp
Is not the fire;
It burns in the essence of
The moth and consumes him entire… ~ Hafiz Shirazi

We
softened. and broke. and kneeled over in pain. and sang. and threw ourselves against the walls. against each other. and hid. and caved. and opened. and tossed ourselves into work. and danced. and shrank. and closed. and ate. and bled. and held on. and ignored. and accepted. and lied. and laughed. and created. and undid. and drank. and drugged. and loved something. someone. somewhere. ourselves. fiercer. and hated. something. someone. somewhere. fiercer. and swam. and rejected. and yearned. and distanced. and clawed. and touched. and some of us will disown you. because you hurt too much. some of us will have to say your name for a year. before we are able to sleep. ~ Nayyirah Waheed

The final entity was the beast. The steel juggernaut that raked claws made of screams along the bones of their soul.All of the pain that Jango had endured as a child had never left his mind. That pain had created a sort of primordial ooze in his fractured mind that sloshed and bled until the beast was birthed from the suffering. The beast lived in a cage forged of willpower deep in the recesses of the mad matrix of his splintered mind. It rattled the cage and roared for release, but he was loath to ever set the beast loose ... again. ~ Cedric Nye

He let his mind wander slightly closer to his present. Electronic music bled into his awareness, reminding him that his body was actually in Ronan's car. In this other place, it was easy to tell that the music was the sound of Ronan's soul. Hungry and prayerful, it whispered of dark places, old places, fire and sex. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

The air was so damp that fish could have come in through doors and swum out the windows, floating through the atmosphere in the rooms. One morning Ursula woke up feeling that she was reaching her end in a placid swoon and she had already asked them to take her to Father Antonio Isabel, when Santa Sofia de la Piedad discovered that her back was paved with leeches. She took them off one by one, crushing them with a firebrand before they bled her to death. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

but was this funny? was this funny? was this funny? why was this funny? why was Sugar Kane funny? why were men dressed as women funny? why were men made up as women funny? why were men staggering in high heels funny? why was Sugar Kane funny, was Sugar Kane the supreme female impersonator? was this funny? why was this funny? why is female funny? why were people going to laugh at Sugar Kane & fall in love with Sugar Kane? why, another time? why would Sugar Kane Kovalchick girl ukulelist be such a box office success in America? why dazzling-blond girl ukulelist alcoholic Sugar Kane Kovalchick a success? why Some Like It Hot a masterpiece? why Monroe's masterpiece? why Monroe's most commercial movie? why did they love her? why when her life was in shreds like clawed silk? why when her life was in pieces like smashed glass? why when her insides had bled out? why when her insides had been scooped out? why when she carried poison in her womb? why when her head was ringing with pain? her mouth stinging with red ants? why when everybody on the set of the film hated her? resented her? feared her? why when she was drowning before their eyes? I wanna be loved by you boop boopie do! why was Sugar Kane Kovalchick of Sweet Sue's Society Syncopaters so seductive? I wanna be kissed by nobody else but you I wanna! I wanna! I wanna be loved by you alone but why? why was Marilyn so funny? why did the world adore Marilyn? who despised herself? was that why? why did the world love Marilyn? wh ~ Joyce Carol Oates

If being a grown-up really meant knowing better, why did his father go on smoking three packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day and snorting cocaine until his nose bled? If being a grown-up gave you some sort of special knowledge of the right things to do, how come his mother was sleeping with her masseuse, who had huge biceps and no brains? ~ Stephen King

He thought of how convincingly he could describe this scene to friends and make them envy the fullness of his contentment. Why couldn't he convince himself? He had everything he'd ever wanted. He had wanted superiority
and for the last year he had been the undisputed leader of his profession. He had wanted fame
and he had five thick albums of clippings. He had wanted wealth
and he had enough to insure luxury for the rest of his life. He had everything anyone ever wanted. How many people struggled and suffered to achieve what he had achieved? How many dreamed and bled and died for this, without reaching it? ~ Ayn Rand

As she searched, she looked down at the fallen architecture and read the names graffitied on its sides. Gracus loves Lucinda. Ethan loves Sarah. Michael loves Erin. For what seemed like days she ran her fingers over the names carved into the fragmented bones of ruined loves, stepping around the broken pillars of unkept vows and dusting headstones in the graveyard of love with her hands. Every kind of death had a resting place in the dry lands.
She walked until her feet bled. ~ Josephine Angelini

Let not the weight of a thousand years, Stain your marbled skin I pray, And let not the weight of words ever hurt, Your delicate wine bled lips. Wear that hallowed smile as your eternal crown, And let it graze and let it flourish, Let it heal my desolate heart morose, Come and baptize all of what is left of me, Before I wear the silence in black and white… ~ Piyush Rohankar

I bled a lot. I got hit across the face. We couldn't film for seven days. I got hit, whacked, underwater, across the face. I finished the shot, got into the boat and blood started coming out. ~ Steve Irwin

It was a magnificent operation, from seed to bale, but not one of them could be prideful of their labor. It had been stolen from them. Bled from them. The tunnel, the tracks, the desperate souls who found salvation in the coordination of its stations and timetables - this was a marvel to be proud of. She wondered if those who had built this thing had received their proper reward. ~ Colson Whitehead

You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the "brain" of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of "other people," which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another's interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting people ~ Philip Roth

The King of Crows raked his fingers across the dark until it bled. He licked the blood from his fingers with a forked tongue. "People will believe anything, you know. You only need them to be frightened enough. ~ Libba Bray

The shed of leaves became a cascade of red and gold and after a time the trees stood skeletal against a sky of weathered tin. The land lay bled of its colors. The nights lengthened, went darker, brightened in their clustered stars. The chilled air smelled of wood smoke, of distances and passing time. Frost glimmered on the morning fields. Crows called across the pewter afternoons. ~ James Carlos Blake

I didn't have time to lose it. I didn't have time to lie down in the corner shop and scream and beat the floor until my hands bled. I didn't have time to miss Jack. Stroma kept on chattering away and getting excited over novelty spaghetti shapes and finding the joy in every little thing, and it occurred to me even then that she was probably looking after me, too. ~ Jenny Valentine

Other believers had suffered in this country. Others had died at these hands, and hands like them. Jesus had suffered far worse. He had suffered and bled and died for her. For her sins. To set her free. To adopt her as a child into His family. To bring her into His Kingdom. Forever. How could she not be willing to suffer and bleed and die for Him?
If that's what He asked, she would do it. With the strength He gave her. Be the grace He provided. And maybe she would see Him soon, face-to-face. ~ Joel C. Rosenberg

i witnessed her heart shatter into
a million pieces as she found herself becoming immune to her emotions
with her lungs incapable of letting the air out and the pain buried within her
unable to burst into tears, she bled in silence. ~ Noah Sammak

Ptah held up his mug. "Do you realize, we've fought together, starved together, bled together, endured slavery, and looked into the jaws of death..."
"But we never drank together!" Marcus finished, clanking his mug to Ptah's.
"Exactly! The drink flows freely, and we must make up for lost time, ha ha ha! ~ Jennifer McKeithen

Being a man is a privilege, not an entitlement. It is a surrender of our priority. It is a laying down of our lives, not physically but inwardly - our preferences, our pleasures, sometimes even our dreams. Our version of Witold Pilecki's medals comes in the lives we offer to God, lives we have bled and sweated and prayed and given ourselves for. This is what it means to be a man. ~ Stephen Mansfield

The porch held a wealth of memories for Quinn of times spent with his father; of more recent times when Quinn took the place of his dad to listen to his sisters, and more often than not, his brother. The area bled memories, and with a handful of lady-luck, it would hold a shit load more. ~ Alex Morgan

As our country bled ... its leader's wife came to this podium piously to call for a new human order, this when thousands of Filipinos were political prisoners. ~ Corazon Aquino

After ripping through The Hobbit, I read The Lord of the Rings, and the darkness of that story enveloped me in a way that is impossible to explain. I was THERE, in a very real sense. The fear was palpable in the presence of the black-cloaked Ringwraiths, and I could taste the sulfurous fumes of Mt. Doom. I could smell the sweat of horses and hot leather and hear the clash of battle as I rode with the Rohan on the fields of the Pelennor. I bled and died with the sun-king, Theoden. I rose again with Eowyn's defiance of the Witch King. I soared with the Eagles as they swept the broken and bloody body of Frodo and his companion Samwise the Brave from the smoking crags of the fiery mountain. There has never been such a story, and I don't think there ever shall be again. ~ Steve Bivans

August groaned inwardly.

Mind over body.

Mind over body.

Mind over body over bodies on the floor over tallies seared day by day by day into skin until it cracked and broke and bled into the beat of gunfire and the melody of pain and the world was made of savage music, made and was made of, and that was the cycle, the big bang into the whimper and on and on and none of it was real except for August or all of it was real except for him. . . . ~ Victoria Schwab

One day on a ranging we brought down a fine big elk. We were skinning it when the smell of blood drew a shadowcat out of its lair. I drove it off, but not before it shredded my cloak to ribbons. Do you see? Here, here, and here?" He chuckled. "It shredded my arm and back as well, and I bled worse than the elk. My brothers feared I might die before they got me back to Maester Mullin at the Shadow Tower, so they carried me to a wildling village where we knew an old wisewoman did some healing. She was dead, as it happened, but her daughter saw to me. Cleaned my wounds, sewed me up, and fed me porridge and potions until I was strong enough to ride again. And she sewed up the rents in my cloak as well, with some scarlet silk from Asshai that her grandmother had pulled from the wreck of a cog washed up on the Frozen Shore. It was the greatest treasure she had, and her gift to me." He swept the cloak back over his shoulders. "But at the Shadow Tower, I was given a new wool cloak from stores, black and black, and trimmed with black, to go with my black breeches and black boots, my black doublet and black mail. The new cloak had no frays nor rips nor tears … and most of all, no red. The men of the Night's Watch dressed in black, Ser Denys Mallister reminded me sternly, as if I had forgotten. My old cloak was fit for burning now, he said. "I left the next morning … for a place where a kiss was not a crime, and a man could wear any cloak he chose. ~ George R.R. Martin

I wanted to be normal. I didn't want to be the woman turned on while her husband held her down on the kitchen floor and dragged a knife across her skin. Pleasure and pain bled together feeding a sickness that I wanted to be cured of. ~ Natalie Bennett

Sometimes writing can take you to such dark places it can be nearly impossible to come back from; a part of you is left there, in the words you've bled onto paper, in the emotions you've let loose upon the page, and eventually, the world. ~ D. Michael Hardy

Most of the neighbors hated us in an offhand sort of manner, since we had twice the space they did, plus a parking area and a small yard - all things virtually unheard of in modern-day San Francisco. I was sure they'd change their minds if they knew how much I'd bled to earn that house. Or maybe not. Reserved parking is hard to come by in this city. ~ Seanan McGuire

Astarte has come again, more powerful than before. She possesses me. She lies in wait for me.

December 97

My cruelty has also returned: the cruelty which frightens me. It lies dormant for months, for years, and then all at once awakens, bursts forth and - once the crisis is over - leaves me in mortal terror of myself.

Just now in the avenue of the Bois, I whipped my dog till he bled, and for nothing - for not coming immediately when I called! The poor animal was there before me, his spine arched, cowering close to the ground, with his great, almost human, eyes fixed on me... and his lamentable howling! It was as though he were waiting for the butcher! But it was as if a kind of drunkenness had possessed me. The more I struck out the more I wanted to strike; every shudder of that quivering flesh filled me with some incomprehensible ardour. A circle of onlookers formed around me, and I only stopped myself for the sake of my self-respect.

Afterwards, I was ashamed.

I am always ashamed of myself nowadays. The pulse of life has always filled me with a peculiar rage to destroy. When I think of two beings in love, I experience an agonising sensation; by virtue of some bizarre backlash, there is something which smothers and oppresses me, and I suffocate, to the point of anguish.

Whenever I wake up in the middle of the night to the muted hubbub of bumps and voices which suddenly become perceptible in the dormant city - ~ Jean Lorrain

Here are the facts. He was standing and he fell. He fell and he kneeled. He kneeled and he bled. He bled and he died. He tell in a heap like any man and his blood spilled out like any blood; red as any blood, wet as any blood and reflecting the sky and the buildings and birds and trees, or your face if you'd looked into its dulling mirror
and it dried in the sun as blood dries. That's all. They spilled his blood and he bled. They cut him down and he died; the blood flowed on the walk in a pool, gleamed a while, and, after awhile, became dull then dusty, then dried. ~ Ralph Ellison

What fools we all are. We girls. Afraid of the wrong things, at the wrong times. Afraid of a burdened face, when outside, outside waiting for you are fires you cannot imagine. Men, holding matches up to your gasoline eyes. Flames, flames all around you, licking at your just-born breasts, your just-bled body. And infernos. Infernos as wide as the world. Waiting to impoverish you, make you ash, and even the wind, even the wind. Even the wind, my dear, she thought, watching you burn, willing it, passing over you, and through you. Scattering you, because you are a girl, and because you are ash. ~ Shobha Rao

I tell you, the Pokemon industry has bled me dry. ~ Alessandro Nivola

These people couldn't be counted on for anything. All of their promises bled into lies. ~ Alexandra Bracken

For men tied fast to the absolute, bled of their differences, drained of their dreams by authoritarian leeches until nothing but pulp is left, become a massive, sick Thing whose sheer weight is used ruthlessly by ambitious men. Here is the real enemy of the people: our own selves dehumanized into the masses. And where is the David who can slay this giant? ~ Lillian Smith

Jehovah "is slow to anger." When mercy cometh into the world she driveth winged steeds; the axles of her chariot-wheels are red hot with speed; but when wrath goeth forth, it toileth on with tardy footsteps, for God taketh no pleasure in the sinner's death. God's rod of mercy is ever in His hands outstretched; His sword of justice is in its scabbard, held down by that pierced hand of love which bled for the sins of men. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Up the stairs I found an imposing headquarters, decorated with the portraits and busts of solemn, whiskered old darlings who, no doubt, bled their customers with leeches and passed on the information to alarmed small boys that self-abuse leads to blindness. ~ John Mortimer

His life was absurd. He went all over the world accepting all kinds of bondage and escaping. He was roped to a chair. He escaped. He was chained to a ladder. He escaped. He was handcuffed, his legs were put in irons, he was tied up in a strait jacket and put in a locked cabinet. He escaped. He escaped from bank vaults, nailed-up barrels, sewn mailbags; he escaped from a zinc-lined Knabe piano case, a giant football, a galvanized iron boiler, a rolltop desk, a sausage skin. His escapes were mystifying because he never damaged or appeared to unlock what he escaped from. The screen was pulled away and there he stood disheveled but triumphant beside the inviolate container that was supposed to have contained him. He waved to the crowd. He escaped from a sealed milk can filled with water. He escaped from a Siberian exile van. From a Chinese torture crucifix. From a Hamburg penitentiary. From an English prison ship. From a Boston jail. He was chained to automobile tires, water wheels, cannon, and he escaped. He dove manacled from a bridge into the Mississippi, the Seine, the Mersey, and came up waving. He hung upside down and strait-jacketed from cranes, biplanes and the tops of buildings. He was dropped into the ocean padlocked in a diving suit fully weighted and not connected to an air supply, and he escaped. He was buried alive in a grave and could not escape, and had to be rescued. Hurriedly, they dug him out. The earth is too heavy, he said gasping. His nails bled. Soil fell f ~ E.L. Doctorow

Hundreds of barefoot Filipinos marched on the roads through the Philippines carrying heavy wooden crosses and whipping their backs until they bled to prepare for Easter. Call me old-fashioned but I just like coloring the eggs. ~ Jay Leno

I caught a glimpse of heaven once. The Angels showed me. The idea was I'd kill for them. Clean up their mistakes on Earth. Eventually redeem myself.

Tried it. Didn't like it. Told them where to stick it. So they brought me up to heaven, to see what I'd be missing. A wife. A son. A daughter. I hadn't seen them since they bled out in my arms. Then I was cast down.

Back to a world of killers. Rapists. Psychos. Perverts. A brand new evil every minute, spewed out as fast as men can think them up. A world where pitching a criminal dwarf off a skyscraper to tell his fellow scum you're back is a sane and rational act. The angels thought it would be hell for me.

(Said dwarf hits the ground with a splat)
But they were wrong.

Welcome Back, Frank. Says New York City. ~ Garth Ennis

…when the dying sun bled the blue sky orange. ~ Jeanette Winterson

When I am tempted and feel the power of sin and its tug on my affections, the gospel gives me something to say: 'Christ bled and died for this sin - I will therefore have nothing to do with it. I am now united to Christ by the indwelling of the Spirit - how can I drag him into my sin? ~ Sinclair B. Ferguson

The believers sing the holy songs of fear, Virgin silence has long bled to tears, Fear no more child the mother says, You shall be safe again in another grave… ~ Piyush Rohankar

my nose bled like a firework ~ Sherman Alexie

I understand that it's disheartening to pour effort and money into a work of art and find that others do not value it with the same intensity. I've been to this rodeo more than a few times, and yes, it's painful and hard on the soul. It is also the sort of thing that grown-ups do every day. Anyone deluded enough to think they are owed monetary success because they bled for their art is in for some hard, hard knocks and buckets full of tears. There will be many cries of "unfair" and much jealousy and hatred. And to be fair, all authors go through this every time they watch their books ride the waves of bestseller charts and the ego torture chamber known as Goodreads reviews. Even the most well-adjusted of us watch that horrible piece of shit book beat our baby to pieces and gnash our teeth and shout at our monitors demanding to know what brain-donors are shopping on amazon.com these days.

But holy Smart Bitch on a cracker, Batman, to write a post about how stupid readers are and worse to actually put it out there on the internet is so beyond the pale there's a special hell for that kind of idiocy. Let me repeat: authors exist at the pleasure of readers. Without the people who buy and read my books, I am just another dizzy broad writing shit down. Readers aren't just an author's audience; they are her lifeblood.
-- ~ Heidi Cullinan

When you've earned something, I mean really earned it, no one can make you doubt that you deserve it. They can't say it isn't yours. There's something about getting a thing that you've bled and fought for that makes the getting that much sweeter. ~ Rachael Allen

God proved His love on the Cross. When Christ hung, and bled, and died, it was God saying to the world, 'I love you. ~ Billy Graham

The claws of Truth were painful. The lies tore away like scabs, and John bled there for hours, stifling his cries of pain in the sleeve of his overcoat - the overcoat he'd received from his father. ~ Frank E. Peretti

He bolted right through the wooden cross arm at the parking garage exit and power-slid into traffic. A torrent of car horns and skids enveloped his vehicle, but the tears in Danny's eyes created the inability to differentiate one vehicle from another. The colors of the automobiles bled into each other like melting rainbow sherbet. ~ Rick Mayhew

It is true. I did fall asleep at the wheel. We nearly went right off a cliff down into a gorge. But there were extenuating circumstances."
Ian snickered. "Are you going to pull out the cry-baby card? He had a little bitty wound he forgot to tell us about, that's how small it was. Ever since he fell asleep he's been trying to make us believe that contributed."
"It wasn't little. I have a scar. A knife fight." Sam was righteous about it.
"He barely nicked you," Ian sneered. "A tiny little slice that looked like a paper cut."
Sam extended his arm to Azami so she could see the evidence of the two-inch line of white marring his darker skin. "I bled profusely. I was weak and we hadn't slept in days."
"Profusely?" Ian echoed. "Ha! Two drops of blood is not profuse bleeding, Knight. We hadn't slept in days, that much is true, but the rest . . ." He trailed off, shaking his head and rolling his eyes at Azami.
Azami examined the barely there scar. The knife hadn't inflicted much damage, and Sam knew she'd seen evidence of much worse wounds. "Had you been drinking?" she asked, her eyes wide with innocence. Those long lashes fanned her cheeks as she gaze at him until his heart tripped all over itself.
Sam groaned. "Don't listen to him. I wasn't drinking, but once we were pretty much in the middle of a hurricane in the South Pacific on a rescue mission and Ian here decides he has to go into this bar . . ."
"Oh, no." Ian burst out laughing. "You're n ~ Christine Feehan

We blasted holes in the night until she bled sunshine ~ Mos Def

Las Vegas is incredible. Either you love it or you're a classy person with morals. I fall into the former category. It's definitely bled into my writing. ~ Alissa Nutting

The final match-up of the round was by far the most satisfying for Rezkin. It was against the mace wielding Sandman who had murdered the young stave-master. The beast had already attempted to end the life of another competitor that morning. Dark Tidings did not even give the man a chance to put on a show. As soon as the announcer finished speaking, he drew the black blade, strode forward with purpose and disarmed the man, literally. After losing both appendages, the brute fell to his knees in shock. While the healers were running to treat the man before he bled out, Dark Tidings stood over the Sandman and said, 'Bracken Freedon of the Isle of Sand. You have been judged and found guilty. Bring nigh to thee, King's Dark Tidings.' The black blade came down in one fell swoop and took the man's head clean from his body. Green lighting crackled within the black swords length... ~ Kel Kade

When men and women of arms have bled to secure a time of peace, the very people who most benefit from that peace are also the most likely to forget the bleeding. ~ Scott Lynch

Always there was a moment - a quick slip of time - when the sun broke free of the trees and bled from its yolk, spilling in red-orange rivers over the silk. ~ Terry Kay

When he removed his robes, you could see the hundreds of scars and bruises that shamelessly decorated his body. Huge black bruises, long scars that came from sword lacerations and whips and new wounds that bled fresh red blood.
The Dragonboy's father had no idea his son suffered.
That's because the boy never told.
From The Binding, a story from the upcoming tenth update of Dragons and Cicadas ~ L'Poni Baldwin

imagine the desert
mothers, with hair tangled
tighter than their theology
and breasts that flowed milk
and mystic wisdom. they
knew how to draw the singing
sigils in the sand, how to dig
rough and bitten fingers
into desiccated dirt for water
to wet the lips of their young.

women of hips and heft, who
learned how to burn
beneath the wild and searing
sun, who made loud love
against the star-flecked threat
of night, who knew that strength
is not always a matter of muscle.

imagine your ancestresses,
the prophetesses of the arid
lands, before these starched
traditions and pews too hard
to pray from, who bled true
ritual and birthed their own fierce
souls at creation's crowning -- ~ Beth Morey

They'd crossed over to that continent where grieving parents lived. It looked the same as the rest of the world, but wasn't. Colors bled pale. Music was just notes. Books no longer transported or comforted, not fully. Never again. Food was nutrition, little more. Breaths were sighs. And they knew something the rest didn't. They knew how lucky the rest of the world was. ~ Louise Penny

I'd lie in bed in my dormitory and grab at bits of my body, wanting to tear them off ... I was so large by then that, in the heat, my thighs chafed together and bled. I was very unhappy, and yet no one ever asked me how I felt. ~ Marcus Brigstocke

Ties to people on the other side of the storm could be severed. Love could bud, then wither and die without a bloom when the storm ended and reality bled back in. ~ Sarah Winter

I wear makeup and I don dramatic attire because I like control. I'm not interested in controlling others but I'm invested in strict self-governance. This is why I don't do many face-to-face interviews. I don't like being caught off-guard. It all goes back to that attempt to create order amidst disorder. One of the most frightening things about losing your mind is that you feel like your body, your brain, every part of your essence is being invaded. There is such a palpable helplessness to that narrative and I hate the sense of victimhood that it implies. Certainly, this is how I felt during my moments of psychological disquiet. I felt like my personhood was under attack. Performativity is important to me because I'm the teller of my own stories. I have been performing these multiple roles for so long that they have bled into my identity. I have become the man that I always wanted to be. ~ Diriye Osman

I'm convinced that people see the ghosts of themselves all the time, but most just chose to block them out. The words don't even make sense to me, and I know it's true. When I was seven years old I saw the ghost of myself at the age of eighteen. Ever since that day I've kicked myself for not asking questions. I've no idea what my eighteen-year-old self could have told me at that point - perhaps nothing at all. Still, I can't help but think of it as a lost opportunity. Somehow there was a slight fluctuation in the current, and two of me bled through the fabric at once.
Trying to figure out the meaning behind such events can drive you mad, because there is no answer. Perhaps it was some sort of hiccup. Then again, perhaps I was making some Herculean efforts to reach out to myself, and that was all I could manage. ~ Damien Echols

But it was like a dance across a field strewn with razors, and I bled with every step I took. ~ Ann Aguirre

If I was working hard, she bled into my personality. I became more cynical. ~ Marg Helgenberger

In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantify of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death. ~ Howard Zinn

You bled on the Speaking stars ... I bet there's a law somewhere about that. ~ Cassandra Clare

The Reason for Skylarks

It was nearly morning when the giant
Reached the tree of children.
Their faces shone like white apples
On the cold dark branches
And their dresses and little coats
Made sodden gestures in the wind.

He did not laugh or weep or stamp
His heavy feet. He set to work at once
Lifting them tenderly down
Into a straw basket which was fixed
By a golden strap to his shoulder.
Only one did he drop - a soft pretty child
Whose hair was the color of watered milk.
She fell into the long grass
And he could not find her
Though he searched until his fingers
Bled and the full light came.

He shook his fist at the sky and called
God a bitter name.
But no answer was made and the giant
Got down on his knees before the tree
And putting his hands about the trunk
Shook
Until all the children had fallen
Into the grass. Then he pranced and stamped
Them to jelly. And still he felt no peace.
He took his half-full basket and set it afire,
Holding it by the handle until
Everything had been burned. He saw now
Two men on steaming horses approaching
From the direction of the world
And taking a little silver flute
Out of his pocket he played tune
After tune until they came up to him. ~ Kenneth Patchen

My war buddies, some were Americans, but some were Afghans. These were the guys that I fought alongside. We bled alongside each other; we mourned together. When I came home, these weren't people I could keep up with on Facebook. ~ Elliot Ackerman

Astrid Dane. . . Her long colorless hair was woven back into a braid, and her porcelain skin bled straight into the edges of her tunic. Her entire outfit was fitted to her like armor; the collar of her shirt was high and rigid, guarding her throat, and the tunic itself ran from chin to wrist to waist, less out of a sense of modesty, Kell was sure, than protection. Below a gleaming silver belt, she wore fitted pants that tapered into tall boots (rumor had it that a man once spat at her for refusing to wear a dress; she'd cut off his lips). The only bits of color were the pale blue of her eyes and the greens and reds of the talismans that hung from her neck and wrists and were threaded through her hair. . .
"I smell something sweet," she said. She'd been gazing up at the ceiling. Now her eyes wandered
down and landed on Kell. "Hello, flower boy. ~ V.E Schwab

Christopher's heart bled that night and he could not sleep. Deborah who used to call him numerous times in a day and send countless messages was now not answering his calls. And she never called him. ~ Ayibu Makolo

I am blooming from the wound where I once bled. ~ Rune Lazuli

Legend says my entire family bleeds nothing but treasure. Of course, I've bled a lot in my time. Sirens lose all serenity when they turn from hunter to prey and pieces of their nails become embedded in my arms. My blood has been spilled more often than any prince's, and I can attest to the fact that it has never been gold. ~ Alexandra Christo

The old woman sang of a time gone ahead, and of those already walking ahead of her on the pathway. Her eyes were reddened as though they bled. And her songs, like the pathways, were interweavings of times and places and of all that breathed between earth and sky. ~ Patricia Grace

They'd spent enough time together that their bodies had pulled on each other, and they now bled at the same time, when the moon was a thin curve of light. If Miel had been anyone else, her knowing this, the steady rhythm of her knowing every month, would have been humiliating. ~ Anna-Marie McLemore

... [T]he whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people, which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another's interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? ~ Philip Roth

She pursued his lips,' Zach laughs. 'Another one I misread! Pursued for "pursed." You know. She pursed her lips. So whenever you do that now, reach out and touch my lips to shut me up? I think, she pursued his lips.'

'That's so silly,' smiles Rachel.

'I know that. Now I'm pursuing your lips,' he adds.

When Zach kisses her, Rachel is often aware of the pulse in his lower labial, a small heartbeat there. She is aware of a pulsing and a slight thickening of tissue. How many times has this boy bled from his mouth? How many times. ~ Emma Richler

They can laugh, but they can't deny us. They can curse and kill us, but they can't destroy us. This land is ours because we come out of it, we bled in it, our tears watered it, we fertilized it with our dead. So the more of us they destroy, the more it becomes filled with the spirit of our redemption. ~ Ralph Ellison

It seemed from the media that we were being told that all Haitians had AIDS. At the time, I had just come from Haiti. I was twelve years old, and the building I was living in had primarily Haitians. A lot of people got fired from their jobs. At school, sometimes in gym class, we'd be separated because teachers were worried about what would happen if we bled. So there was really this intense discrimination. ~ Edwidge Danticat

At night I told myself a story, wordless, inside my head, one I liked far better than those in my books. The girl in my story was treated cruelly, by fate, by her family, even by the weather. Her feet bled from the stony paths; her hair was plucked from her head by blackbirds. She went from house to house, looking for refuge. Not a single neighbor answered his door, and so one day the girl gave up speaking. She lived on the side of a mountain where every day was snowy. She stood outside without a roof, without shelter; before long she was made of ice - her flesh, her bones, her blood. She looked like a diamond; it was possible to spy her from miles away. She was so beautiful now that everyone wanted her: people came to talk to her, but she wouldn't answer. Birds lit on her shoulder; she didn't bother to chase them away. She didn't have to. If they took a single peck, their beaks would break in two. Nothing could hurt her anymore. After a while, she became invisible, queen of the ice. Silence was her language, and her heart had turned a perfect pale silver color. It was so hard nothing could shatter it. Not even stones. ~ Alice Hoffman

Fuck the pack. I gave them fifteen years of my life. I fought for them, bled for them, and the moment my back was turned, they attacked my wife. I owe them nothing. ~ Ilona Andrews

I haven't bled enough to make me buoyant. ~ Sou Macmillan

Home was where the heart was, where we bled, where we laughed, met those we love, where we built, and what we fought for. Home was the dry soil we kept nurturing unconditionally, the place we took care of ... ~ Cameron Jace

By quietly showing me Christ's love, my friend had led me to the Source of that love. For the first time, I truly grasped that Christ had died for me - suffered, bled, and died–and that I could be his through faith. I was amazed at how simple it was. Why had it all seemed so hard, so impossible before? ~ Ira Wagler

On some intuitive level, I knew that learning had to be more than the mastery of facts. I've experienced it as an adult. I become consumed with a subject like quilting or preparing yogurt cultures, and that topic takes over my life - fabric scraps scattered on the floor, little jars of white sludge cuddled by blankets on my kitchen countertops. When I learned to play guitar in my thirties, no one had to schedule my practices. My guitar lived on a stand in the living room and I tormented our ears multiple times a day until my fingers bled. Passion for learning has that fiery, consuming, can't-stop quality. ~ Julie Bogart

The match was a short one. The mountain brute received several gashes across his flesh that bled profusely, but the fight came to an abrupt halt when he cleaved the whip-wielding arm from his opponent's body. The crowd cheered, some cringed, and others bathed the stands in their lunch. ~ Kel Kade

Kids don't have a little brother working in the coal mine, they don't have a little sister coughing her lungs out in the looms of the big mill towns of the Northeast. Why? Because we organized; we broke the back of the sweatshops in this country; we have child labor laws. Those were not benevolent gifts from enlightened management. They were fought for, they were bled for, they were died for by working people, by people like us. Kids ought to know that. That's why I sing these songs. That's why I tell these stories, dammit. No root, no fruit! ~ Utah Phillips

I got my first real six string, bought it at the five and dime, played it 'til my fingers bled. ~ Bryan Adams

As the helicopter fell, its dead rotors started to spin, and Ruvola used that energy to slow the aircraft down. Like downshifting a car on a hill, a hovering auto-rotation is a way of dissipating the force of gravity by feeding it back through the engine. By the time the helicopter hit the water it had slowed to a manageable speed, and all the torque had been bled out of the rotors; ~ Sebastian Junger

This is our home and this is our country. Beneath its soil lie bones of our fathers; for it some of them fought, bled, and died. Here we were born and here we will stay. ~ Paul Robeson

Soft hearts bled, and in their pain they caused grief and havoc. ~ Sophie Jordan

May we all, as a nation of believers, fight for the achievement of America; may we make sacrifices worthy of those proud men and women who fought for us, labored for us, bled soil from the beaches of Normandy to the fields of Gettysburg for us. ~ Cory Booker

To say that some kind of god might exist is to vivify its being with mystery. To define a god into existence because it meets certain criteria for godhood is to kill that god by turning it into a cheapjack idol with a publicity team of theologians behind it. This would explain why so many deities - all of them, in fact - have fallen apart or are in the process of doing so: eventually every god loses its mystery because it has become overqualified for its job. After a god's mystery is gone, arguments for its reality begin. Logic steps in to resuscitate what has been bled of its healthful vagueness. Finally, another "living god" is consigned to the mortuary of scholars. ~ Thomas Ligotti

My hunger for writing will die when I have bled for the humans that never found the strength to find the words themselves ~ Christopher Poindexter

…the child's heart bled when it was broken. ~ Louisa May Alcott

We think it would be wise in you to try to git [sic] influence by offering to print a paper in favor of the government as you know we are all friends to the Constitution yea true friends to that Country for which our fathers bled. ~ Joseph Smith Jr.

Sat on his mattress and raised the shirt to his face. Inhaled slowly, closing his eyes. Time seemed to slow down, and all his stress bled away. His dick hardened. ~ Anonymous

So please stop pretending you were the only casualty in the game of you and me. Because I bled just like you did. I died a little that day too. ~ Nicole Williams

Was there ever a war where only one side bled? ~ George R R Martin